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LENIN 



BY 

M.-A. LANDAU-ALDANOV 

Authorized Translation 
from the French 




NEW YORK 
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

681 Fifth Avenue 



79U. 



Copyright, 1022, 
By E. P. Dutton & Company 



All Rights Reserved 



23- 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED 
STATES OF AMERICA 



©CI.A659137 

HARtS'22' 



V 



^ 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE 

npHIS book has two purposes in view. 
* It studies on the one hand a very strong and 
a very curious personality. No man, not even 
Peter the Great, has had more influence on the 
destiny of my country than Lenin. No man, not 
even Nicholas II, has done it more harm. In 
speaking of a despot it is natural that I should 
look for comparisons among men of his own 
kind! 

Eussia has given the world great geniuses and 
profound thinkers. In their effect on the West- 
ern world not one of them has had an influence 
at all comparable to that of this doctrinaire who 
is perhaps not even very intelligent. For this 
disconcerting situation to become a fact, two world 
calamities were necessary : the war and the social 
revolution. They paved the way for the destroy- 
ers — the Ludendorfs and the Lenins. 

On the other hand, this book is meant to be a 
study in social philosophy. The idea of a com- 
munist revolution is its principal concern. A 
search for the origins of Bolshevist doctrine leads 
us back to the theories of Karl Marx, Michael 
Bakunin and Georges Sorel, who today, after the 



vi AUTHOR'S PREFACE 

"acid test" of 1914-1919, stand revealed in a 
new light. 

At the very beginning, I want particularly and 
frankly to forewarn the reader of the general 
standpoint from which my book is written; so 
that he may read it or lay it aside according to the 
character and the strength of his political con- 
victions. 

The anthor of this study is a socialist 1 who is, 
at the same time, a counter-revolutionist and an 
anti-militarist. These two words are used here 
not in the factitious and artificial sense in which 
they circulate in soap-box oratory, but in their 
strictly literal and precise meaning. One can be 
an anti-militarist without insisting that the flag 
be relegated to the dung-heap. One can be a 
counter-revolutionist without sharing the political 
ideals of Stolypin. What these words really 
mean is this : 

We do not want wars or revolutions, either to- 
day or in the future. We have seen them close 
at hand and have had enough of them. These 

1 The author belongs to the labor party led by Miakotine 
and Pechekhonof, former colleagues of Mikhailovsky, and of 
Tchaikovsky, the present head of the government at Arch- 
angel. This party is probably the only one in Russia which 
has stuck to its original platform, the main planks of which 
are: national defense, free from all chauvinism and all im- 
perialistic policies; fidelity to alliances; the democratic "bill 
of rights"; a constituent assembly; a union of all forces 
recognizing the sovereignty of universal suffrage; the most 
far-reaching social reforms brought about in a legal manner. 
This is also the party which took the initiative in the con- 
ferences leading to the Union for the Rejuvenation of Rus- 
sia (Revolutionary Socialists, Social-Laborites, Social-Demo- 
crats and Cadets of the Left). 



AUTHOR'S PREFACE vii 

two phenomena are about equal in value whether 
considered from the point of view of morals or 
from that of human progress. They are as alike 
as two peas. We consider them the worst calami- 
ties that can befall free peoples. 

All countries of Europe except Eussia have 
institutions which permit of the conflict of ideas 
without resort to barricades and machine guns. 
That is why we hope that the revolution destined 
eventually to upset Bolshevist tyranny will be 
the last one. If this is a mistaken hope, so much 
the worse for Eussia! 

In another book, Armageddon, written during 
the years 1914-1917 (in Eussian), I tried to show 
that the World War meant a terrible crisis (and 
perhaps ruin) for certain principles which guided 
the partisans as well as the adversaries of the so- 
cial order of the old civilization. I was glad to find 
a similar idea expressed in a recent article by 
Guglielmo Ferrero. 1 The well-known historian 
draws a parallel between the crisis of today and 
that of the third century of our era brought about 
by the civil wars which followed the death of Alex- 
ander Severus and which led to the overthrow of 
the authority of the Eoman Senate. Ancient civili- 
zation did not survive that crisis. Will ours have 
a better fate? Has it, or will it find, a principle 
on which to base a stable social order? This is 
the problem with which we are faced. It is 

1 Guglielmo Ferrero, "La Ruine de la Civilization Antique," 
Revue des Deux Mondes, September 15, 1919. 



viii AUTHOR'S PREFACE" 

certain that one wonld look in vain for such a 
saving principle among the men who are responsi- 
ble for the late war, as well as among those who 
wonld now plnnge us into the abyss of universal 
Bolshevism. 

The nightmare which started in 1914 is not 
yet over. The wine is drawn and we mnst drink. 
Nothing trner or sadder than this was ever said ! 
Yes, we must drink the wine that others have 
drawn. We mnst drink it to the dregs! 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Author's Preface v 

CHAPTER 

I. The Stages in Lenin's Career ... 1 
II. Lenin's Writings from 1894 to 1904 . . 20 

III. Lenin's Ideas and Policies during the 

First Russian Revolution (1905-1906) 33 

IV. The Philosophical Ideas of Lenin . . 45 

V. Prophecies in General and Those of 

Lenin in Particular 59 

VI. The Personality of Lenin 71 

VII. The Theories of the Social Revolution: 

Marx, Bakunin and Sorel .... 93 

VIII. Some Fundamental Ideas of Bolshevism 123 

IX. Lenln and the French Revolution . . 142 

X. Semi-Bolshevism : the Platform of the 

French Socialist Party 165 

XI. The Socialism of the Near Future : Jean 

Jaures 186 

XII. Theories That Are Dead and Ideas That 

Endure 210 



IX 



LENIN 



PART I 

CHAPTER I 

THE STAGES IN LENIN'S CAREER 

IT is not my intention to give the reader a 
detailed biography of Lenin. A few facts of his 
life are necessary, however, to fulfill my larger 
purpose. I have taken them almost entirely from 
Bolshevist sources, especially from the volume 
which Zinoviev, the intimate friend and colleague 
of Lenin, has devoted to the present master of 
Russia. 1 The tone of beatified admiration which 
penetrates this book is very striking. So true 
is it that every Don Quixote has the Sancho Panza 
he deserves! 

Let me begin by marking some of the crucial 
stages in Lenin's life, reserving for later chap- 
ters an account of the ideas of the Bolshevist 
leader and their evolution. 

Vladimir Iliitch Oulianov, who has won world- 
wide notoriety for himself in the last few years 
under the pseudonym of " Lenin,' ' was born on 
April 10, 1870, at Simbirsk. His father, a "state 

1 G. Zinoviev, N. Lenin, W. J. Oulianov (in Russian), Pe- 
trograd, 1919. 

1 



2 LENIN 

counselor," was superintendent of the public 
schools there. This school superintendency was 
a rather high position under the old Ministry of 
Education. Its incumbent had a right to the title 
of "Excellency" in Russia. 

Lenin conies from the hereditary nobility. A 
legend, now widely circulated, even boasts of the 
antiquity and the riches of the Oulianov family. 
But Zinoviev says, perhaps as a sop to the demo- 
cratic sensibilities of the public, that the father 
of Lenin was of peasant origin. It would in any 
event be very difficult to draw conclusions as to 
the " influence of environment and heredity" on 
the personality and actions of Lenin. His nature 
is a remarkable combination of the pretentious 
violence of the country squire with the elementary 
shrewdness of the peasant. 

Lenin was still in school when a tragedy — one 
of the common tragedies of the old Revolutionary 
agitation — took place ; and in it his elder brother 
played the leading role. At this time the Narod- 
naia Volia 2 party which was carrying the entire 
burden of the revolutionary struggle at the end 
of the reign of Alexander II, had been driven out 
of existence. This party organized a series of 
attempts on the Czar's life, the last of which, 
that of March 1 (March 13), 1881, was successful. 
A large number of the conspirators were hanged. 

2 "The Will of the People." The word Volia has a double 
meaning in Russian: will, but, in poetical language, also 
liberty. 



THE STAGES IN LENIN'S CAREER 3 

Herman Lopatine, 3 the last of the party's leaders, 
was arrested and thrown into the Schlusselburg 
prison. 

The unequal struggle between a handful of 
intellectuals and the most powerful autocracy in 
history seemed tb" be over. Brutal reaction ex- 
emplified in Alexander III and in Pobiedonostsev, 
his favorite adviser, triumphed. But the ideas 
which inspired the party, and especially the idea 
of fighting absolutism by terrorism, had not lost 
value in the eyes of the Russian intellectuals. 
The principal theorist of the Narodnaia Volia 
party, Nicholas Mikhailovsky (the famous publi- 
cist, sociologist, and literary critic), maintained, 
later on, that the terrorist attacks failed to realize 
their objective — the political freedom of Russia — 
not because they were pushed too far, but because 
they were not pushed far enough. The impression 
produced on the Russian mind by the assassina- 
tion of Alexander II was very great. If Alex- 
ander III, who was much more reactionary than 
his father, had met with the same fate in spite 
of all the precautions of an improved police sys- 
tem, reaction might, quite possibly, not have been 
able to stand this second blow. That, at least, 
was the belief of the younger revolutionary set to 
which the student, Alexander Oulianov, Lenin's 

3 This famous revolutionist, the intimate friend of Marx, 
and admired by Herzen and Turguenev, died in 1919. In 
spite of the extreme poverty of his last days he disdainfully 
refused the pension offered him by the Bolshevist government 
which he hated. 



4 LENIN 

elder brother, belonged. A new attempt, this 
time on the life of Alexander III, was prepared 
by a small gronp of young men of which he was 
the leader. It was to take place March 1 (March 
13), 1887, on the sixth anniversary of the death 
of Alexander II. The Czar was to be bombed on 
the Nevsky Prospect. But the police, warned 
ahead of time, caught the terrorists red-handed 
with the bombs in their pockets; and success- 
fully forestalled the attack. Alexander Oulianov 
and four of his comrades were hanged in the jail- 
yard of the Schlusselburg fortress. This tragedy, 
known as "the affair of the second First of 
March,' ' gave the death-blow to the Narodnaia 
Volia. 

This party held to theories known in the history 
of Eussian thought <as "populist ideas." The 
Populist (Narodniki) thought that Eussia could 
escape the capitalistic stage of economic develop- 
ment which all the old European nations have 
been traversing. They thought that the people 
could pass directly, without intermediary phases, 
into a universal millennium; and they believed, 
more or less, in the presence of socialistic in- 
stincts in the Eussian peasant. In their lofty 
idealism they taught that it was the duty of all 
Eussian intellectuals to devote their lives and 
their knowledge to the cause of the unhappy 
masses whose age-long poverty had furnished the 
means for a small minority to attain a high degree 
of civilization. They did not subscribe to the 



THE STAGES IN LENIN'S CAREER 5 

loctrine of economic materialism, which, indeed, 
Mikhailovsky subjected to a very remarkable 
critical analysis. Not accepting the theory of 
scientific socialism which expects the world to be 
? reed by the working class alone, they did not 
>elieve that the proletarization of the peasant 
nasses could contribute to the cause of universal 
)rogress. 

At the beginning of the '90s this mixture of 
itopian and of sound ideas, for which so many 
Russians struggled and died, met with very 
dolent opposition from the younger generation 
low being brought up on the theories of Karl 
tfarx. A struggle started between Mikhailovsky 
tnd his school, on the one hand, and, on the other, 
he Marxians, whose main protagonists were 
?lekhanov, the leader of the Social-Democrats, 
md Struve, who now belongs to the Right of the 
^adet Party. This famous controversy between 
^opulists and Marxians is really not yet over. 
tWen today two Russian socialist parties, the 
Social Laborites and the Revolutionary Social- 
sts, follow the ideas of Nicholas Mikhailovsky 
rejecting, of course, those which have been re- 
lated by experience 4 ) ; while Marxism remains 
he theoretical basis of the Social Democratic 
3 arty. 

Alexander Oulianov belonged, so it seems, to 

4 Mikhailovsky himself realized that it was impossible for 
tussia to avoid the capitalistic stage of economic develop- 
nent. 



6 LENIN 

the generation of Populists which was already- 
familiar with the ideas of Karl Marx. Just before 
the attack of March 1, 1887, he was planning, 
with M. Koltzov, the publication of a " socialist 
library," the first pamphlet of which was to be 
an article of Marx's on Hegel's philosophy, trans- 
lated by him. 5 

Vladimir Oulianov (Lenin), after finishing his 
course in the lycee, went to study law at the Uni- 
versity of Kazan. At that time he frequented the 
small groups of students engaged in studying 
Populist literature; but he deserted this camp 
the moment he discovered Marx. Having been 
expelled from the University of Kazan for "tak- 
ing part in agitation," he went to Petrograd 
where he passed the State examinations in law. 
This was the Eussian equivalent for admission to 
the bar. 

"The legal career," says Zinoviev, "did not 
appeal to Comrade Lenin. Vladimir Iliitch often 
spoke humorously 6 of his few days 'in the toga.' " 
He gave up legal practice almost immediately 
and became a "professional revolutionist." Rus- 
sia is the only country left where revolution is 
a profession; and this "Russian trait" is of 
no slight importance in the history of modern 
Russia ; a great many of the politicians who played 
an important part in the events of 1917-1919 

5 D. Koltzov, "The End of Narodnaia Volia and the begin- 
nings of Social-Democracy. The '80s" (in Russian). 

e Humor is nevertheless a quality which Lenin seems to 
lack entirely. 



THE STAGES IN LENIN'S CAREER 7 

are revolutionists by profession and have never 
learned any other trade. 

' ' When Lenin was expelled from the University 
of Kazan," M. Zinoviev tells us, "he came to 
Petrograd. Already inoculated with the ideas of 
Marx at Samara, he went through the capital on 
a hunt for Marxians. But he did not find any. 
The Populists were masters still; and the work- 
ing class was just beginning to take an interest 
in politics. Young Comrade Lenin, however, in 
less than two years, organized the first groups 
of working men and gathered about him a small 
number of Marxian intellectuals." 

In the early '90s Lenin took part in the forma- 
tion of the "Union of Struggle for the Freedom 
of the Working Class." "Acting in the name of 
this organization, he managed our first strikes, 
and wrote his first simple and unassuming pam- 
phlets — they were circulated in mimeograph copy 
—in which he voiced the economic needs of the 
workers of Petrograd. He spent day and night 
in the workers' tenements. The police persecuted 
liim. He had only a small circle of friends. 
Almost all the self-styled ' revolutionary intel- 
lectuals' of the day greeted him coldly; for about 
this time the Populists were proscribing Marxians 
rnd burning the first Marxian works of Pelk- 
lanov in which Lenin had studied." 

One can see from this quotation the "passion 
? or style" (as one of Gogol's characters said) 
vhich is characteristic of M. Zinoviev 's talent and 



8 LENIN 

which leads him to exaggerate the truth (exag- 
geration is also one of his accomplishments) by 
making the young Lenin a kind of unappreciated 
prophet persecuted by the wicked Populists, who, 
by implication are represented as acting in con- 
junction with the police! 

In reality Lenin was doing in Petrograd just 
what hundreds of other men were doing at that 
time. He was attracting no particular surveil- 
lance from the authorities; and certainly "almost 
all the self-styled revolutionary intellectuals of 
the day" were paying very little attention to 
him. Let us remark in passing, that Lenin's im- 
prisonment (to say nothing of Zinoviev's) was 
very short and does not bear comparison 7 with 
the real martyrdom suffered by many of these 
Populists who are today being treated as "reac- 
tionaries" by the Bolshevist rulers of Eussia! 

The persecution he is said to have undergone 
at the hands of the mysterious Populists who 
"burned the books of Plekhanov" is pure fiction. 
On the contrary, the period which Lenin himself 
called the "honeymoon of genuine Marxism" was 
approaching. "Marxian books," as he writes, 
"were appearing one after the other. Marxian 
newspapers and Marxian magazines were being 
founded; everybody was posing as a Marxian. 
Followers of Marx were being coddled and made 
much of, and publishers were rubbing their hands 

7 This is equally true of Trotsky, Lunatcharsky, Kamenev, 
and all other outstanding Bolshevist leaders. 



THE STAGES IN LENIN'S CAREER 9 

in glee over the unheard-of vogne of Marxian 
books." 8 

Towards the end of the '90s, Lenin was arrested 
and sent into exile. From that time on he became 
an " emigre' ' and remained one, save for a few 
short interruptions, nntil 1917. 

In 1901, together with Martov and Potressov, 
Lenin founded a magazine called Iskra (The 
Spark), which has played an important part in 
the history of the revolutionary movement in 
Kussia. For two years later the Russian Social- 
Democratic Party, founded in 1898, split into two 
factions, Bolshevist and Menshevist. Lenin re- 
signed editorship of Iskra (Menshevist) and 
founded the first Bolshevist organ, Vpered (For- 
ward). In 1905 "the first, the historic, Congress 
which laid the foundations for the Communist 
Party of today" (the third Congress of the 
Social-Democratic Party) was held. This Con- 
gress was inspired and directed by Lenin. With 
the division of the party into two factions, he 
became the undisputed leader and the recognized 
mouthpiece of the Bolshevists. 

In 1905 the first Russian revolution began. 
M. Zinoviev characterizes the part which Lenin 
played in it as "something immense, something 
decisive." He is quite right ! Lenin lost the first 
Russian revolution. 

The measures he was advocating at this time 

8 N. Lenin, the essay entitled "Que Faire?," in Twelve 
Years (in Russian, Vol. I, p. 195. 



10 LENIN 

were as follows: boycott of the Duma; struggle 
against the "counter-revolution of the Cadets ;" 
organization of an armed uprising for the estab- 
lishment of a revolutionary and democratic dic- 
tatorship. We will have something more to say 
of these ideas, when we come to consider his 
pamphlet on "Two Tactics of Social Democracy.' ' 
Lenin had a wrong impression of the respective 
strength of the two camps in this struggle; and 
the Menshevists speak of his error as a crime. 
But the events of 1917, though they took place 
under conditions far different from those of 1905, 
have shown that the Menshevists probably exag- 
gerated the importance of the conservative forces 
in Bussia. 

From an external point of view, the role of 
Lenin in the revolution of 1905 was somewhat 
overshadowed. The Soviet of Workers' Deputies 
of Petrograd was founded and run by the Men- 
shevists. Its first president was Khroustalev- 
Nossar, and its second, Trotsky. Lenin did not 
take any part in it. 

"He was present," says M. Zinoviev, "at only 
one or two of the meetings of the Soviet of Petro- 
grad in 1905. Comrade Lenin told us how he 
attended the session of the Soviet in the hall of 
the Free Economic Society, sitting in the gallery, 
invisible to the public, and for the first time 
watching the Soviet of Workers' Deputies of 
Petrograd in action. Comrade Lenin was living 
in Petrograd illegally, and the Party forbade him 



THE STAGES IN LENIN'S CAREER 11 

to appear in public too openly. The official repre- 
sentative of our Central Committee at the Soviet 
was A. A. Bogdanov. When the tip was passed 
around that the Soviet was to be arrested, we 
forbade Comrade Lenin to go to that last historic 
session so that he would not be involved. He 
saw the Soviet only once or twice in 1905. But 
I think that even then, while he was looking down 
from the gallery of the Free Economic Society 
upon this original 'workers' parliament,' the po- 
tential power of the Soviets first dawned upon his 
mind. ' 9 

In 1907 Lenin went abroad again. 

"Lenin was an exile twice," M. Zinoviev tells 
us. "He spent several years abroad. Some 
other comrades, myself among them, shared his 
second period of exile. And whenever we were 
sad and dejected, especially toward the last, dur- 
ing the war, whenever we lost courage (those 
comrades who have been exiles like us know what 
it means not to hear a word, of one's native 
tongue for years and years), 9 Comrade Lenin 
used to say to us: 'What are you fellows com- 
plaining for? Do you think you know what ban- 
ishment means ? Plekhanov, Axelrod — they knew 
real exile. They had to wait twenty-five years 
before seeing the first revolutionary workingman ! ' 

9 One is agreeably surprised to learn that Zinoviev suffered 
so much in the cafes of Geneva at not hearing his "Russian 
native tongue." But he naturally says this out of that same 
"passion for style" and for the benefit of comrades who have 
not been in exile; because those who were know very well 
that our exiles hear nothing but Russian. 



12 LENIN 

"Vladimir Iliitch, indeed, suffered in exile like 
a caged lion. He could make no use of his great 
and inexhaustible energy; and he got along only 
by doing what Marx had done under similar 
circumstances. He spent fifteen hours a day in 
the library, and it is partly due to this that he 
is today one of the most learned Marxians, and 
on the whole one of the best read men of our 
age." 

M. Zinoviev is undoubtedly an entirely com- 
petent judge on this point. 

Lenin published several pamphlets abroad and 
supervised the publication of several Bolshevist 
papers. In 1912 he settled in Cracow in order 
to direct the Bolshevist movement in Russia at 
closer range. His devoted friend and most in- 
timate collaborator in the movement in Russia 
was then Malinovsky, a Social-Democratic mem- 
ber of the Duma. 

Malinovsky had been a secret agent of the 
Police Department. There were <a few acts of 
burglary in this man's dark past with which the 
police were very familiar. They offered to over- 
look these minor sins if he would devote his talents 
to the secret service. He accepted. The Police 
had the effrontery to put him up as a candidate 
for the Duma. He was elected, thanks to the 
double support of the Bolshevists and the police. 
As president of the "parliamentary wing" of the 
Bolshevists, he made ultra-revolutionary speeches 
on all important occasions. Some of his speeches 



THE STAGES IN LENIN'S CAREER 13 

were inspired or even dictated by Lenin, whom 
Malinovsky often went to see in Cracow. Others 
came from the pen of Bieletzky, the head of the 
Police Department, one of the most remarkable 
police officers in czarist Eussia, which produced 
many excellent detectives. Malinovsky served his 
two masters at one and the same time. Thanks 
to him and to the writer Tchernomasov, another 
officer in the Police Department, who ran the 
Pravda, the official organ of the Bolshevists, 
Bieletzky not only had full knowledge of every- 
thing that went on at Bolshevist headquarters; 
but was able to exert a certain mysterious influ- 
ence on revolutionist policy. Malinovsky had the 
full confidence of Lenin and Zinoviev. When 
Bourtzev accused a third well-known Bolshevist, 
Jitomirsky, 10 of being an agent-provocateur of the 
Police Department, Lenin sent Malinovsky to 
him to ask for proof of this accusation. At the 
same time Malinovsky was commissioned by Bie- 
letsky to find out if possible from Bourtzev the 
sources of the latter 's information on the agents- 
provocateurs. But Bourtzev, whether by happy 
chance or from instinctive distrust of the man, 
made no revelations to him in spite of all his 
efforts. 11 

10 This accusation was absolutely justified ; the documents 
which were found after the revolution show conclusively that 
Jitomirsky was an agent-provocateur. 

11 Vladimir Bourtzev, "Lenin and Malinovsky," No. 9-10, 
of Struggling Russia, May 17, 1919. The sources of 
Bourtzev's information on the Malinovsky affair are quite 
numerous. While he was imprisoned under the Bolshevist 
regime in the Peter-and-Paul Fortress, his companion in 



14 LENIN 

In 1914, Djounkovsky, under-secretary of State 
of the Interior, found out that a secret agent of 
the police was a member of the Legislative As- 
sembly. He regarded this situation as intolerable 
for the good name of the Imperial Government 
and demanded the man's immediate resignation 
from the Duma. Malinovsky obeyed and left the 
country. Nothing official was ever published 
about this matter ; but this extraordinary case of 
treason was common talk in society and in the 
press. Lenin and Zinoviev supported him in spite 
of the open and formal accusations made against 
him by Bourtzev in December, 1916. They did not 
submit to the evidence till after the revolution, 
when the material proofs of Malinovsky ? s career 
as an agent-provocateur were published. 12 

Through Malinovsky and Tchernomasov, as 
well as sincere Bolshevists who often went to 
Cracow to get their instructions, as Catholics go 
to get theirs at the Vatican, Lenin had a very 
great influence on the Bolshevist movement in 
Eussia. It is quite possible that the mysterious 
views of Bieletzky were absolutely in accord with 
the extremist policies of Lenin. I shall revert to 
this subject in a following chapter. 

seclusion was Bieletsky, who was shot later on. The former 
head of the secret service had nothing more to hide. He 
confided to Bourtzev all the ramifications of that wonderful 
detective story. The methods Bieletsky used far outstrip the 
imagination of Conan Doyle. 

12 Malinovsky carried on Bolshevist propaganda in the Rus- 
sian prison camps in Germany during the war. When he re- 
turned to Russia of his own accord after the Armistice he 
was shot with Lenin's sanction. 



THE STAGES IN LENIN'S CAREER 15 

The war found Lenin in a small village of 
Galicia. He was first arrested by the local author- 
ities; but the central government in Austria 
realized immediately that it was more advan- 
tageous to its cause to give complete freedom of 
action to a Eussian of that breed. Lenin was 
released and left for Switzerland. His role in 
the propaganda which ended in the Conferences 
of Zimmerwald and Kienthal, as well as in those 
Conferences themselves, is well known. He nat- 
urally belonged to the extreme left of the Zim- 
merwaldians. At Kienthal, with the support of 
Eadek, he proposed sabotage and armed revolt 
to put an end to the war between the nations and 
to begin that between the classes. 

In March, 1917, he went back to Russia by way 
of Germany in the famous "sealed car," which 
was not so tightly sealed as has been supposed. 
This is the sensational journey which attracted 
the attention of the whole world to Nikolai Lenin. 
Up to this time, in spite of his great authority 
in revolutionary circles, most of the Russian in- 
tellectuals had only the vaguest notions of his 
personality, to say nothing of the proletarian 
rank and file, to whom his name meant nothing at 
all. The word Bolshevist, which has since become 
so commonplace, was of very restricted circula- 
tion at that time. But those were days of patriotic 
intoxication over new-born freedom in Russia. 
People asked themselves in astonishment why a 
Russian should be going through Germany to get 



16 LENIN 

back to his own country; why a revolutionist 
should be asking favors of the agents of an Im- 
perial Chancellor ; and especially why that Chan- 
cellor made haste to do the revolutionist the 
little favor which was asked. It can be said with- 
out exaggeration that Lenin owes his first notori- 
ety to that episode of the "sealed car." 

His first speech was not a success. It was made 
early in April (1917) at the Soldiers' and "Work- 
ers' Council at Petrograd, where the Bolshevist 
program (which has since been "realized") was 
formulated. Among those who attacked him most 
violently were some of his future colleagues and 
associates. Steklov who is at present editor of 
lsvestia, the official organ of the Soviet govern- 
ment, said, for example, that Lenin's program 
was that of an anarchist; and that Lenin was 
booming his candidacy for the empty throne of 
Bakunin. It is well known, I suppose, that no 
worse insult could have been offered a Eussian 
Social-Democrat than to call him an anarchist 
and compare him to Bakunin. Lenin's political 
position was therefore one of "splendid isola- 
tion." 

Trotsky had not yet returned from America. 
For that matter he had not yet come over to Bol- 
shevism. 13 During the war he (as well as M. 
Lunatcharsky, the People's Commissar of Edu- 
cation) had worked hard under the pseudonym of 

13 In the articles which he published in Switzerland, Lenin 
continually denounced the opportunistic, the "bourgeois," 
ideas of Trotzky. 



THE STAGES IN LENIN'S CAREER 17 

"Antid Oto" for the KievsJcaia My si and Den, 
which were neither defeatist, nor out-and-out 
pacifist, nor even Zimmerwaldian papers; and 
which were, in fact, later suppressed as counter- 
revolutionary by the government whose principal 
posts their former editors now adorn. Lenin's 
only faithful supporter at this time was Zinoviev ; 
and their names were long inseparable. Not for 
some time still did the phrase " Lenin-Trotsky" 
come into usage, replacing that of "Lenin-Zino- 
viev." Only one of the tricks of a cruel and un- 
just fate has put the engaging figure of the Presi- 
dent of the Commune of Petrograd somewhat in 
the shade. 

Bolshevism was probably even less well known 
abroad. Karl Liebknecht in Germany and Alex- 
andre Blanc in France were still a hundred 
leagues behind Lenin's program. As for the 
Shapiros, the Koritschners, the Bela Kuns, they 
had not peeped as yet, and were of no concern 
to anybody. 

The rest of the story is familiar to everyone. 
From the day of His return to Eussia (April 4, 
1917) each step of Lenin's was honored with 
world-wide advertisement. The history of his do- 
ings in 1917-1919 cannot yet be written. Its stages 
— we are only speaking of stages here, remember — 
are: a violent campaign of disorganization car- 
ried on in Eussia from the balcony of the Kches- 
insky Palace and through the columns of Pravda; 
the unsuccessful revolt of July, 1917; his flight 



18 LENIN 

into Finland ; his return from Finland in October 
and his triumphal entry into the Smolny Insti- 
tute at the head of the government of the People's 
Commissars; the armistice with Germany; the 
peace of Brest-Litovsk ; experiments with com- 
munism; an unprecedented reign of terror; the 
Third International ; the " dictatorship of the 
proletariat;" chaos; civil war; and the complete 
collapse of Russia. 

These exploits were crowned with universal 
glory. In 1918 when the Bolshevists paraded in 
their Congresses the foreign, not to say exotic, 
delegations which came all the way from the 
Indies, from Afghanistan, from Zanzibar, from 
Kingdom Come, to greet in the name of the com- 
munist organizations of their countries the great 
Eepublic of the Soviets and Lenin, its Pope, they 
were the delight of the humorists and the joy of 
the cynics. But the joke was clearly on the 
humorists and on the cynics. For here we find 
the socialist parties in Italy and Norway reso- 
lutely taking sides with the Third International; 
and here is the Italian Avanti striking out and 
marketing a large medal of Lenin, "profile and 
full face," with the inscription ex oriente lux; 14, 
here are the newspapers speaking of a general 
strike in Italy to celebrate the birthday of the 
Eussian dictator, 15 and Italian workers beginning 
to give their first-born sons his name! In Ger- 

14 Avanti (Milan), June, 1919. 
15 Daily Mail, April, 1919. 



THE STAGES IN LENIN'S CAREER 19 

many a parliamentary idealist, Karl Liebknecht 
by name, who has called himself a Social-Demo- 
crat for twenty years, nevertheless gives np the 
party made famons by his father to become a 
"communist" — because Lenin prefers that name. 
And in France another parliamentary idealist, 
Jean Longnet, if you please, talks seriously of 
the "radiation of the Eussian Eevolution ; " 1<s 
while the official organ of the French Socialist 
Party goes into ecstacies over the " genius," the 
philosophic "originality," "the penetrative acu- 
men," "the wonderful revolutionary spirit," "of 
the greatest statesman of the age!" 17 And an 
English writer, finally, speaking of the "page of 
history the Bolshevists are writing," dares to 
say that it will seem as "white to posterity as 
the snows of Eussia!" 18 

Eeally as white as all that, Mr. Arthur Ean- 
some? 

16 See Longuet's article in Le Populaire, June 20, 1919. 

17 Humanite, August 1 and September 2, 1919. 

18 Arthur Ransome, "For Russia, A Letter to Americans." 



CHAPTER n 

LENIN'S WRITINGS FROM 1894 TO 1904 

LENIN began his literary career with a little 
propaganda pamphlet, addressed to the work- 
ers of Petrograd, and entitled "Workers' Com- 
pensation." 1 This fact wonld almost be sufficient 
by itself to show that he is not a "writer" though 
he has written a great deal. Lenin is always the 
political propagandist, whether he writes on 
workers' compensation or on Berkeley's philoso- 
phy. That is why he treats these two subjects 
in exactly the same manner; as indeed is very 
natural, since Berkeley interests him from the 
same point of view as workers' compensation. 
This is far from being a weak point in the curious 
personality with which we are dealing. The im- 
mortality that Lenin aspires to is not the im- 
mortality of letters. Natures, moreover, as single 
of purpose as his are very rarely found outside 
insane asylums ; and this singleness of purpose — 
others might call it proneness to the idee fixe — 
carries with it a certain strength, as the case of 
Lenin shows. 

1 Need we advert that Zinoviev finds in this negligible 
pamphlet of the young Lenin the classic model of "Marxism 
made easy for the plain man?" 

20 



XENIN'S WRITINGS FROM 1894 TO 1904 21 

Lenin's literary and political activities may be 
classified under three headings: (1) the campaign 
against the Populists; (2) that against the legiti- 
mate Marxism of the Eussian Moderates and the 
German Eevisionists ; (3) the split inside the 
Eussian Social-Democratic Party. 

The part played by Lenin in the struggle 
against the Populists was quite a minor one in 
spite of what is said of it by Zinoviev. This 
Boswell of Bolshevism, in describing the im- 
pression which Lenin's articles (published under 
the nom-de-plume of Toulin) are alleged to have 
made in those early days (1895), uses the follow- 
ing very up-to-date language: "Somebody, some- 
one with brain and brawn, is stirring things up 
in that petty-bourgeois slough of despond. The 
stagnant waters are beginning to come to life. A 
new face is peering above the horizon — and there 
is a scowl of dissatisfaction on it. Something 
fresh and original is in the close air!" 

All of which is simply another product of Zino- 
viev 's "passion for style." In reality Lenin's 
articles attracted scarcely any attention at all. 
The debate between the Marxians and the Popu- 
lists was confined to the fields of political economy 
and philosophy. Lenin did not know any political 
economy at that time; as for philosophy, he is 
ignorant of it still. Struve surpassed him in 
learning; Plekhanov in literary talent (that is not 
saying much) ; and they are the principal figures 
in the controversy with the Populists. The most 



22 LENIN 

Important article by Lenin, "The Economic Bases 
of Populism and the Critique of M. Struve" 2 
(1895), in so far as it deals with Populist doctrine, 
contains very little that is new. It is more inter- 
esting in the light of what he says of Struve 
himself. I may observe, in this connection, that 
Struve occupies a unique position in Lenin's 
literary activities. He is, if I may say so, the 
Bolshevist leader's bugaboo. For a good quarter 
of a century Lenin has not missed an opportunity 
to attribute every imaginable crime to this, the 
principal, champion of Marxism in Eussia. And 
not to be outdone Trotsky has also paid some 
attention to the same monster, whom he found 
worthy of a special pamphlet entitled: "Mr. Peter 
Struve in Politics." 

In the autumn of 1894, before a small committee 
meeting in Petrograd, Lenin read an article 
against Struve (who was in the audience) entitled 
"The Eeverberations of Marxism in Bourgeois 
Literature. ' ' That article already contained 
some of the Bolshevist ideas of today. Lenin 
emphasized the fact that in all the writings of 
Marx the transition from the present regime to 
the new appears as a sudden breakdown, a sudden 
collapse upon itself, of capitalism. He repeated, 
following an opinion of Sombart, the belief, so 

2 The book in question, by P. B. Struve, created a great 
•sensation at the time. It is his Critical Remarks on the 
.Economic Development of Russia (1894). This book, as 
well as that by Plekhanov, On the Development of the 
Monistic Conception of History, mark the beginning of the 
Marxist era in Russia. 



LENIN'S WRITINGS FROM 1894 TO 1904 23 

characteristic of him, that " there is not a trace 
of ethics in the whole of Marxism. ' ' He protested 
against Struve 's assertion that "Marx went too 
far in denying the necessity for 'the State." All 
this was in fact, as Lenin said later, "a warning 
to Struve from a revolutionary Social-Demo- 
crat." 3 On the other hand, Lenin agreed with 
Struve in affirming "the necessity, inevitableness 
and progressive character of Eussian capital- 
ism." This was a shaft aimed at the Populists 
and their Utopias. It is interesting to note, how- 
ever, that it is the now very Marxian Lenin who 
is trying to make Kussia avoid the capitalistic 
stage, on which she had barely entered, and plunge 
directly into the blissful era of communism! To 
be sure, twenty-five years have passed since that 
time. But Lenin, nevertheless, now out-utopias 
the Utopian Populists in believing that a country 
with a population of 150 millions, eighty per cent, 
of whom are peasants; a country with industry 
still undeveloped in spite of great natural re- 
sources, could pass through the capitalistic stage 
in twenty-five or thirty years and be ripe today 
for the communist regime! 

Another Lenin article devoted somewhat later 
to Struve, who had at the time become one of 
the leaders of moderate Eussian liberalism, is 
entitled: "The Persecutors of the Zemstvos and 
the Hannibals of Liberalism." This is probably 

3 N. Lenin, Twelve Years (in Russian), Vol. I, pp. iii, 76, 
63, 62, 44. 



24 LENIN 

the Bolshevist leader's best effort in political 
theory. Lenin accuses Struve of not pushing 
his democratic program far enongh. He quotes 
the words of his liberal antagonist addressed 
to the rulers of Czarist Eussia: "It is with 
sincere regret that we foresee the enormous losses 
in men and material to result from this ab- 
surdly conservative and aggressive policy which 
is as devoid of political insight as it is of 
moral justification." To these words, which the 
events of the present day have fully justified, 
Lenin adds: "What bottomless pit of doctrin- 
airism is opened by this attitude toward the 
revolutionary upheaval! The author seems not 
to realize the great historical importance which 
a good dressing-down administered to the Gov- 
ernment by the people of Eussia would have." 
Here the real Lenin is speaking. Perhaps even 
today he is filled with the desire to give the 
capitalistic regime a good ' i dressing-down ! ' ' Un- 
fortunately in these experiments in social peda- 
gogy, one never knows, after the thrashing is over, 
which side held the whip end, which side gives, 
and which takes! 

Moreover, there was no question at that mo- 
ment of attacking the capitalistic system. Lenin, 
quite to the contrary, was talking with a great 
deal of conviction of an alliance with liberalism. 
"If the liberals," he said, "can manage to organ- 
ize in an underground party, we will welcome the 
development of political self -consciousness in the 



LENIN'S WRITINGS FROM 1894 TO 1904 25 

controlling classes; we will support their de- 
mands; we will try to make the policy of the 
Liberals and that of the Social-Democrats sup- 
plement each other. But even if, as is more than 
likely, they are unable to get together in this 
way, we will not abandon the Liberals, but will 
try to strengthen our union with some of them, 
keep them posted on our own plans, support them 
by denouncing in the labor press all the ignomin- 
ies of the government and the local authorities, 
and urge them to support the revolutionists. 
Such an exchange of services between Liberals 
and Social-Democrats is actually taking place at 
present; but it must be extended and made more 
efficient. We have freed ourselves from the il- 
lusions of anarchism and Populist socialism, from 
disregard for politics, from faith in the devel- 
opment sui generis of Eussia, from the convic- 
tion that the people are ready for revolution, 
from the theory of 'participation in Power,' and 
from the notion that a few heroic intellectuals 
can win against Absolutism." 

This was written in 1901. Whatever political 
changes have taken place since then, one cannot 
read these lines in a work by Lenin without blank 
astonishment! "Exchange of services between 
Liberals and Social-Democrats !" . . . Many Lib- 
erals in 1918-1919 paid with their lives or their 
liberty for the attention which Lenin and his col- 
leagues on the Extraordinary Commission paid 
them. Others, like Struve, had to flee to escape 



26 LENIN 

from the Bolshevist executioners. 4 It is even 
more interesting to hear Lenin call the idea that 
the people are ready for revolution "a dangerous 
illusion." 

Lenin made a great name for himself in Social- 
Democratic circles with the pamphlet he published 
abroad in 1897: "The Problems of the Russian 
Social-Democrats," to which Axelrod, one of the 
founders of the party, but today a rabid ad- 
versary of the People's Commissars and of their 
leader in particular, 5 wrote a flattering preface. 
There were three editions of this pamphlet. But 
the reasons for its success are quite beyond our 
comprehension. It is very badly written (as most 
of Lenin's articles are) and contains nothing but 
commonplaces. 

The works of Lenin on political economy are 
his soundest efforts. He has, in general, no liter- 
ary talent. His political pamphlets are of scant 
importance; but undoubtedly he has read exten- 
sively in the field of economic science. This is 
the subject where he is best equipped. His prin- 
cipal economic works are The Development of 
Capitalism in Russia (written to prove that Rus- 

4 We may recall, in this connection, that Struve formerly 
had occasion to render valuable personal services to Lenin. 
Zinoviev speaks of them in his biography of his master: 
"Struve was Lenin's friend and rendered inestimable ser- 
vices to him as well as to the Social Democracy of that time/' 
I have heard the same thing from Struve himself. 

5 "Axelrod," says Zinoviev indignantly, "did nothing but 
tell stories to all who would listen to him, that Lenin would 
be a second Netchaiev; that in his struggle against the 'old 
fogeys' he would be guided solely by considerations of per- 
sonal ambition, etc." 



LENIN'S WRITINGS FROM 1894 TO 1904 27 

sia has already entered on a capitalistic stage) ; 
and a series of articles on the Kussian agrarian 
question. 

Needless to say that on the agrarian matter, 
Lenin has always been one of the most rabid 
anti-revisionists; and he has, moreover, changed 
position many times. In his pamphlet, "The 
Needs of the Village'' 6 for instance, he declared 
himself in favor of giving absolute liberty to the 
peasant to do what he wishes with his land, sell- 
ing it if he desires. With his unquestioned mas- 
tery of the arts of the demagogue he there held 
up his Social-revolutionist adversaries (who 
stood for the nationalization of landed property) 
to the scorn of the laborers in the villages as 
despotic trustees bent on denying the peasants 
the right to dispose of their property freely. But 
shortly afterwards he broke radically with this 
theory of laissez faire, and adopted the doctrine 
of land nationalization. It was just as easy for 
him to write another pamphlet then to prove the 
opposite of what he had demonstrated a few 
years before. Since 1905, accordingly, he has been 
quite uninterested in the right of the peasant to 
sell his piece of land; he demands support, 
instead, for the "aspiration of the revolutionary 
peasantry to abolish private proprietorship in 
land." 7 

6 N. Lenin, "The Needs of the Village. An Open Letter to 
the Rural Poor" (in Russian), Petrograd, 1905. 

7 N. Lenin, "The Revision of the Agrarian Program of the 
Labor Party" (in Russian), Petrograd, 1906, p. 31. 



28 LENIN 

In 1898 the first congress of the Social-Demo- 
crats, which founded the Social-Democratic Labor 
Party of Enssia, took place. A program was 
outlined there which exaggerated the impor- 
tance of a purely economic tactic on the part 
of the proletariat. Against this movement which 
came to be termed economism, Lenin immediately 
took the field. Early in 1902 he published, 
abroad, his famous pamphlet "Que Fairef," 
which started a very violent controversy and 
which remained the best known of his writings 
down to 1917. In it Lenin proposes the creation 
of a corps of professional revolutionists to make 
a business of revolution and of the art of fighting 
the secret police. 

Lenin here gives an accurate and picturesque 
description of the revolutionary movement of 
the '90 's. "Because of our primitive methods," 
he says, "we have lowered the prestige of the rev- 
olutionist in Eussia. Weak and hesitant in mat- 
ters of theory, cramped in his views, seeking in 
the apathy of the masses an alibi to justify his 
own weakness, more like the secretary of a trade 
union than a tribune of the people, incapable of 
those grand and audacious resorts which inspire 
even one's adversaries with respect, inexperienced 
and awkward in his professional technique — the 
art of fighting the secret service — our revolu- 
tionist is not a revolutionist at all : he is nothing 



LENIN'S WRITINGS FROM 1894 TO 1904 29 

but a pathetic koustar, a 'dub', a poor devil living 
by a trade be has never learned. ' ' 

"Our militants will doubtless find me severe in 
this. They must forgive me, for I mean to be just 
as severe toward myself. I too am one of those 
Jcoustars. I have been working in a group of peo- 
ple who set out to do great things — and we, who 
are members of that group, blush with shame at 
the thought that we also are only koustars, and 
that too at a time, of all times in our history, when 
one might truly paraphrase the well-known saw: 
1 Give us organization, and we will overturn Rus- 
sia'! But the more keenly I feel that shame, the 
more bitter I am against those false Social Dem- 
ocrats who dishonor the name of revolutionist by 
their sermons, and who seem not to realize that 
it is our duty not to degrade the revolutionist to 
the status of the koustar, but to raise the koustar 
to the dignity of the revolutionist !" 

No one can deny that Lenin managed to make 
himself a very finished model of the professional 
soap-boxer. Those who saw with their own eyes 
the fruits of agitation which he carried on in 1917 
from the balconies of the Hotel Kchessinsky and 
through the columns of the Pravda, those who saw 
the Russian army fall to pieces bit by bit and the 
Russian population lose its nerve from day to day 
under the same agitation, will do full justice to 



30 LENIN 

the surpassing demagogy, the rare professional 
talent of this man Lenin. 

But our admiration must stop right there. 
When the October revolution brought victory to 
the Bolshevists, Lenin, the accomplished agitator, 
became the koustar again, and started the era of 
Jcoustar, or "dub," socialism. There were very 
few professional revolutionists in his camp. The 
rank-and-file of his followers was made up of a 
small number of sincere — however ignorant — 
communists lost in a mass of adventurers of every 
sort, fishers, as the French say, in muddy waters, 
common police-court criminals. The amateurs, the 
Jcoustars, of socialism, and professional crooks, 
formed the legions of our Bolshevist pretorians. 

At the second Congress of the Social-Demo- 
cratic Party in August, 1903, the split between 
the Menshevists and the Bolshevists was fore- 
shadowed. 8 The dissension hinged, at that time, 
on technical questions of organization. Today 
the divergence between Bolshevist and Menshevist 
is far more fundamental. Many men who were 
then the adversaries of Lenin are among his clos- 
est associates now — Trotsky, for a conspicuous 
example. On the other hand, Plekhanov, who, 
without joining the Bolshevists in 1903, had sup- 
ported Lenin in many points, later became his 

8 The latter obtained the majority of votes at the Con- 
gress; and it is from that fact that this well-known word is 
derived: Bolshevist meant "one who voted with the ma- 
jority." 



LENIN'S WRITINGS FROM 1894 TO 1904 31 

rabid antagonist. When one reads the accounts 
of the second Congress and the political pamphlets 
and editorials of the period, it is hard to grasp 
the connection between the discussions of that 
time and those of today. Such a connection never- 
theless exists; but it is a matter of niceties of 
scant interest to the general reader. The dis- 
cussions, of course, had a very sectarian, a very 
Talmudic, character. Two sessions of the Con- 
gress, to illustrate, were devoted to a debate on 
the first article of the constitution of the Party. 
Lenin wanted it stated in the following terms: 
* 'Whoever endorses the Party platform and sup- 
ports the Party both with financial contributions 
and with regular personal service in one of its 
organizations is considered a member of the 
Party." 

Martov, the leader of the Menshevists, on the 
other hand, demanded the following formula: 
" Whoever subscribes to the Party platform, sup- 
ports the Party with financial contributions and 
with regular personal service under one of its 
organizations is considered a member of the 
Social-Democratic Labor Party of Russia." 

The difference between in and under is what 
Lenin, Plekhanov, Martov, Trotsky, Axelrod, Mar- 
tynod, Akimov, Libet, Popov, Broucker, and com- 
pany talked about for two days, and wrote about 
for two years afterwards. The mind wearily 



32 LENIN 

reverts to some (Ecumenical Council in Constan- 
tinople: Is the Son similar (opnoloudros) to the 
Father, or is He identical (opnopoudios) f Should 
God the Father be called Creator, or Creator of 
Heaven and Earth? If a good Social-Democrat 
still maintains that the difference between the 
formulae of Lenin and Martov really had a great 
practical importance, Gregory and Nectarius said 
the same of their hair-splitting at Constantinople. 
In short, all the jawing at the Second Congress, 
simmered down, according to Lenin, to a struggle 
between revolutionary Social-Democrats, who ob- 
tained a majority and of whom he was the lead- 
er and the Opportunist elements, "less firmly 
grounded" (still according to Lenin) "in theory 
and principles." Martov and several others, on 
the other hand, saw a "revolt against Leninism" 
in these arid debates. 



CHAPTEE in 

LENIN'S IDEAS AND POLICIES DURING THE FIRST 
RUSSIAN REVOLUTION (1905-1906) 

IN May, 1905, the third Congress of the Social- 
* Democratic Party, or to be more exact, the 
first Bolshevist Congress (for the Bolshevists 
alone took part in it), was held in London. The 
Menshevists met simultaneously in Geneva. The 
split between the two branches of the Party was 
wider than ever because of the problems which 
came up in the first Russian revolution. Lenin, 
whose influence dominated the Congress of Lon- 
don, wrote a book on this schism which is most 
interesting on the background of what he is saying 
and doing today. 1 

The main ideas of the Congress of London, that 
is to say of Lenin, may be reduced to this : 

"The immediate interests of the proletariat, 
as well as the exigencies of its struggle for the 
final objectives of socialism, demand the most 
complete political freedom ; hence the substitution 
of a democratic republic for absolutism. 

1 N. Lenin, Two Tactics of Social-Democracy in the De- 
mocratic Revolution (in Russian) , Geneva, 1905. 

33 



34 LENIN 

"The establishment of a democratic republic 
in Russia is possible only as the result of a vic- 
torious uprising of the people whose organ must 
be the provisional revolutionary government, 
which is alone capable of assuring free elections 
and of convoking, on the basis of universal, equal 
and direct suffrage with the secret ballot, a Con- 
stituent Assembly expressing the real will of the 
people." 2 

These are the very words of the man, who, 
thirteen years later, brutally dissolved the Con- 
stituent Assembly, convoked on the basis of uni- 
versal, equal and direct suffrage with secret ballot ; 
and who set up in Russia that "full freedom of 
elections" with which everybody is familiar! 

There are things in Lenin's pamphlet, however, 
which seem still more incredible today. 

"The Marxians, " he wrote, "are absolutely con- 
vinced of the bourgeois character of the Russian 
revolution. What does that mean? It means that 
those democratic transformations in the political 
regime, and those economic and social changes 
which have become a necessity for Russia, do not 
in themselves involve the overthrow of capitalism 
and of bourgeois rule; but on the contrary will 
clear the ground for the first time for an extensive 
and rapid development of capitalism which will 
be European and not Asiatic; and for the first 

2 The resolution of the Congress of London (May, 1905). 



LENIN'S IDEAS AND POLICIES 35 

time will make possible the domination of the 
bourgeoisie as a class." 3 

"It is reactionary to look for the salvation of 
the laboring class elsewhere than in the gradual 
development of capitalism. In countries like 
Eussia, the working classes suffer less from cap- 
italism than from lack of a well-developed capital- 
ism. The working class is therefore intensely 
interested in the greatest, freest, and most rapid 
development of capitalism. Hence the bourgeois 
revolution is extremely advantageous to the pro- 
letariat. The bourgeois revolution is absolutely 
necessary in the interests of the proletariat." 4 

From this Lenin drew the following practical 
conclusions : 

"In setting the realization of the minimum- 
program as the goal of the provisional revolution- 
ary government, the resolution [of the Congress 
of London] rejects eo ipso the foolish and semi- 
anarchistic idea of the immediate realization of 
our maximum-program and of the conquest of 
power with a view to a socialist revolution. The 
present state of economic development in Eussia 
(an objective condition), and that of the class- 
consciousness and organization of the proletarian 
masses (a subjective condition indissolubly bound 
up with the former), make the absolute and imme- 

3 N. Lenin, "Two Tactics of Social Democracy," in Twelve 
Years, Vol. I, p. 410. 
* Ibid., p. 411. 



36 LENIN 

diate liberation of the working class impossible. 
Only the most ignorant people can fail to perceive 
the bourgeois character of the present democratic 
revolution; only the most naive optimists can for- 
get that the laboring masses still know very little 
about the aims of socialism and the methods 
whereby socialism may be attained. " 5 

It must be supposed, therefore, that the econom- 
ic development of Eussia (the objective condition), 
and the socialistic education of the proletarian 
masses (the subjective condition indissolubly 
bound up with the former), have made miraculous 
progress since 1905 ! Though it is hard to judge 
the "subjective condition" — since such a judg- 
ment might itself be accused of "subjectivism" — 
we have exact data on the "objective condition." 
The war and the revolution have seriously im- 
peded the economic development of Eussia. 6 Eus- 
sian industry has been partly destroyed and partly 
paralyzed. Under these circumstances this com- 
parison of Lenin's ideas in 1905-1906 with his 
policies in 1917-1918 is very edifying. 

It must not be thought, however, that Lenin's 
program in 1905 was a rational and consistent 
one. He was already talking of the "revolution- 
ary and democratic dictatorship of proletariat and 
peasantry." How this idea could have been com- 
patible with that of the Constituent Assembly 

* N. Lenin, Ibid., p. 397. 

6 See Raoul Labry's book on Bolshevist Industry. 



LENIN'S IDEAS AND POLICIES 37 

and political liberties has been and remains his 
secret, a secret which no one but the Bolshevists 
have been able to fathom. But the following may 
help: 

"It will, of course, be a democratic and not a 
socialistic dictatorship," wrote Lenin. "It will 
not be able to touch the foundations of capitalism 
(without a series of intermediary stages of rev- 
olutionary development). It will, at the very best, 
be able to bring about a new and fundamental 
re-distribution of landed property to the advan- 
tage of the peasants; to establish consistent and 
complete democracy as a preliminary to the set- 
ting up of a republic; 7 to remove not only from 
rural but from factory life all Asiatic and despotic 
features; to start seriously improving the con- 
dition of the workingman and his standard of 
living ; and, last but not least, to spread the revolu- 
tionary conflagration over Europe as a whole. But 
even such a victory would not make our bourgeois 
revolution a socialist revolution." 8 

The goal which Lenin proposed in 1905 for his 
"revolutionary and democratic dictator ship' ' (ex- 
cept for the last but not least part of it) was sur- 
passed in 1917 by the Provisional Government. 
That Government introduced the eight-hour day 

7 This formula was meaningless, because it is obvious that 
the "revolutionary democratic dictatorship" could only have 
been established after the downfall of the Monarchical re- 
gime. 

8 N. Lenin, Ibid., p. 416. 



33 LENIN 

and government control of industry (something 
far better than Lenin's modest formula of "im- 
proving the condition of the workingman and his 
standard of living"). It put an end to "all 
Asiatic and despotic features in Russian life" 
(but not for long, however, as the Bolshevists have 
introduced in their stead features which were 
known neither to the old regime nor to Asia) ! 
A fundamental agrarian reform 9 and a most rad- 
ically democratic constitution were accepted by 
everyone in advance ; and the Constituent Assem- 
bly would surely have voted for them without 
resort to a dictatorship. Hence the program of 
the Provisional Government which Lenin criti- 
cized so severely went much further than the one 
he advocated in 1905 for the "revolutionary dem- 
ocratic dictatorship." 

It is true that "at the very best" this dictator- 
ship might spread the revolutionary conflagration 
over Europe as a whole. Here we find an abrupt 
leap in the thinking of this agile intellectual. "We 
must not fear a decisive victory for social democ- 
racy in the democratic revolution of peasants and 
workingmen," said Lenin; "for such a victory 
would enable us 10 to arouse all Europe ; and when 
the socialist proletariat of the West has over- 

9 Lenin's agrarian program was very modest at that time. 
He later realized that it was "far too limited." 

10 It is obvious here that it is no longer a question of "at 
the very best." Lenin is very positive in his predictions. 



LENIN'S IDEAS AND POLICIES 39 

thrown its bourgeoisie, it will in turn help us to 
bring about a socialistic revolution. ' ' Here Lenin 
has completely forgotten all that he himself said 
above on the necessity of a general and free devel- 
opment of capitalism in Russia, scrapping both 
the objective and the subjective condition on 
which he has been insisting. The idea of an im- 
mediate socialist revolution which at that time 
was "foolish," " semi-anarchistic ' ' and above all 
" reactionary,' ' suddenly becomes realizable pro- 
vided the proletariat of Europe come to Russia's 
rescue. This is an expression of that "Messianic 
expectation" which has always been Article I in 
the Bolshevist creed, as we can still see today. 
Are things going badly in Russia? Karl Lieb- 
knecht will help us. Is Karl Liebknecht no more % 
Very well, OBela Kuhn will do it! And so on! 

Lenin, as a good Marxist, thought at that time 
that industrial worker and peasant could act to- 
gether only so long as the struggle against reac- 
tion lasted. "But," he said, "the time will come 
when the struggle against absolutism will be over. 
Then it will be ridiculous to rely on a union of 
proletariat and peasantry — on a democratic dic- 
tatorship, in short. It will then be time to con- 
sider a socialistic dictatorship of the prole- 
tariat." 11 

Now the struggle against absolutism is over; 
and, in spite of that, proletariat and peasantry 

n N. Lenin, Ibid., p. 436. 



40 LENIN 

seem to be acting together just the same. The 
Commissars of the People, despised by all the 
peasants and a majority of the industrial workers, 
call themselves the " Government of Workers and 
Peasants. " The ingenious Bolshevist theorists 
first tried to entice to their cause deputies from 
the batrdks (agricultural laborers without land) ; 
then committees of the biedniahi (indigent pau- 
pers) ; and finally committees of sredniaki (mod- 
erately poor) ; now they are talking of peasants 
pure and simple. And that unity of purpose be- 
tween peasant and industrial worker, that unity 
which it was "ridiculous to speak of " in 1905, still 
exists. Needless to say, this unity is a reaction 
to the personality of Lenin. For with "scientific 
socialism" all things are possible! 

There is a particularly interesting point in this 
same article of Lenin's (the one written in 1905), 
where he deals with the question of terrorism : 

"If the revolution wins a decisive victory,' ' said 
Lenin, "we will settle our reckoning with abso- 
lutism by using the methods of the Jacobins ; or, 
if you prefer, we will settle it in what the French 
Eevolution called, a ' plebeian manner. ' The whole 
of the French Terror, according to Marx (Nach- 
lass, Vol. Ill, p. 211), was only the 'plebeian' 
method of settling accounts with the enemies of 
the bourgeoisie — absolutism and feudalism. Are 
those who frightened the Social-Democratic work- 



LENIN'S IDEAS AND POLICIES 41 

ers of Eussia with the ghost of Jacobinism during 
the Democratic Eevolution familiar with these 
words of Marx?" 

"The Bolshevists, the Jacobins of the Social- 
Democracy of today, expect the public, that is to 
say, the proletariat and the peasantry, to settle 
accounts 12 with the monarchy and the aristocracy 
in this 'plebeian' manner, pitilessly annihilating, 
that is, all enemies of liberty, forcibly repressing 
their propaganda, and refusing the slightest con- 
cession to the accursed heritage of serfdom, 
Asiaticism, and outrage to humanity." 13 

This shows the disingenuousness of Bolshevist 
assertions today, to the effect that their reign 
of terror was a reply to the intervention of En- 
tente imperialism, to the action of the Eevolution- 
ary Socialists, and to the attacks of the Czecho- 
slovaks. 14 

The Bolshevist Terror was, in reality, at least 
to a certain extent, the realization of a project 
formulated by Lenin fifteen years ago. The acts 
of the Extraordinary Commission, the shootings 
and massacres of hostages, the assassination of 
the Czarevitch and of the daughters of Nicholas 

12 The Russian expression is somewhat stronger than 
"settle accounts." 

13 N. Lenin, ibid., pp. 417 to 418. 

14 This assertion was recently repeated by Lenin himself 
to a United Press correspondent: "Terrorism," he said, 
"was the answer of the proletariat to the action of the 
bourgoisie which was in conspiracy with the capitalists of 
Germany, America. Japan and France (Humanite, August 
6, 1919). 



42 LENIN 

II, the wholesale execution of nobles and their 
families, the cruelties and tortures in the pris- 
ons — all were part of the program of "settling 
accounts " in what Lenin terms the Jacobin or 
" plebeian" manner which he outlined in 1905. 
And this malice aforethought is all the more cy- 
nical from its skulking under cover of " respect 
for humanity" and of protest against "Asiatic- 
ism!" 

It is strange, and yet rather characteristic of 
the old regime that the book from which I take this 
quotation appeared openly in Poland in 1908, 
while Stolypin was in power — and Stolypin was 
the demi-god of all Russian reactionaries. In any 
free state, failure to suppress such a book might 
have been quite natural. But the Russia of 
Stolypin was not a free state. The novelist Me- 
rejkovsky was prosecuted for not having treated 
the Emperor Alexander I (who died in 1825 !) with 
sufficient respect in one of his novels. 15 The fa- 
mous author, Korolenko, was brought to trial for 
publishing in his magazine {JRousshoie Bogatstvo) 
a posthumous work of Leo Tolstoi, The Legend 
of Fedor Kousmitch, in which Catharine II, if you 
please, is represented in a manner that is hardly 
flattering. The followers of Tolstoi were consid- 
ered dangerous and were persecuted, exiled, and 

15 That charge was false, moreover, as M. Merejkovsky 
proved in his speech to the court in his own defense. 



LENIN'S IDEAS AND POLICIES 43 

thrown into prison. The books of Tolstoi himself 
were burned. 

Now one is inclined to ask: Why this official 
indulgence 16 toward a book which contained a 
direct appeal for an armed uprising and a reign 
of terror? Was it pure stupidity on the part of 
the Czar's government? That is quite possible — 
stupidity was always one of the chief virtues of 
the old order in Eussia ! But there was probably 
a better reason in this case. We know, from 
abundant evidence, that the Police Department 
deliberately allowed a Bolshevist paper to be pub- 
lished in Petrograd. To be sure, its editor was 
an agent provocateur; but the articles printed 
were none the less Bolshevistic, ultra-Bolshevistic 
indeed. At the same time they persecuted the 
magazines and newspapers of the Moderates ; im- 
posing heavy fines, and sending their editors to 
prison for years. 

It is very possible that the Police Department 
wanted to repeat the experiment of an armed 
uprising like that of 1905 in Moscow. That was 
a great triumph for the police. Organized by the 
Bolshevists under the direction of their Congress 
of London (that is to say of Lenin), this outbreak 
gave the Government of the Czar the opportunity 

16 1 am told that the sale of the volume containing Lenin's 
article was later suppressed, but without further legal con- 
sequences. I bought it at a book-store in Petrograd. The 
very fact that dealers were able to publish it and sell a good 
number of copies is significant enough. 



44* LENIN 

to exterminate all the forces of the revolution in 
a short decisive struggle of a few days. It is pos- 
sible that the Police Department was preparing 
another experiment of the same kind and was aid- 
ing Bolshevist propaganda with this end in view. 
Plekhanov and many others considered Lenin's 
tactics in 1905 a crime against the revolution ; but, 
it is well to remember that both sides staked 
everything on the result. Lenin has that quality 
which all strategists value : he never exaggerates 
the strength of his adversaries. "Bashness suc- 
ceeds as often as it loses; its chances in life are 
even," said Napoleon, who knew what he was 
talking about. Both the Police Department and 
Lenin were "taking chances" — an armed out- 
break could ruin the cause of revolution, as 
was the case in 1905; but it might also be the 
finish of the monarchy, as proved to be the case 
in 1917! 



CHAPTER IV 

THE PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS OF LENIN 

A FTER the failure of the first Russian revolu- 
** tion, Marxian thought in Russia underwent 
a crisis. Many Social-Democrats, Bolshevist as 
well as non-Bolshevist, felt the need of giving their 
socialistic ideas a philosophic basis other than 
that of the materialism of Engels, Mehring, La- 
f argue or Plekhanov. A series of articles on phil- 
osophy was written by Social-Democrats, such as 
Lunatcharsky, Basarov, Bogdenov, Iuchkevich 
and others. 

"At this time," says Zinoviev, "a literary 
maraude, an unheard-of literary disintegration 
began. 1 They wanted to sell the workers the rot- 
ten ideas of bourgeois philosophy under the label 
of Marxism." 

This phenomenon immediately attracted the 
angry attention of Lenin, who saw a danger in it. 
He had never gone into philosophy up to that 
time and did not think in general that "philo- 
sophic" problems which had not been solved by 

1 Among the "they" were M. Lunatcharsky, to-day the 
colleague of Lenin and Zinoviev in the Council of the People's 
Commissars. Hence this discreet formula: they wanted. 

45 



46 LENIN 

Marx and Engels could exist for a good Social- 
Democrat! The effrontery of deserters from 
materialism made him furious. These Social- 
Democrats who were rising in revolt — a revolte 
a genoux to be sure — against the dialectic material- 
ism of Marx and Engels had to be brought to their 
senses ! 

Lenin shut himself up in the Bibliotheque 
Nationale in Paris and started to study bourgeois 
philosophy. I heard one of his friends say that 
he learned ( !) bourgeois philosophy in six weeks; 
but according to Zinoviev, Lenin gave two years 
of his life to this subject. At any rate, he wrote 
an extensive book, which appeared in 1908 and 
which Zinoviev glorifies as a " great theoretical 
work and an important contribution to philosophy, 
which lays the foundation for Communism." 

This work is indeed extremely curious, though 
mainly from a psychological — not to say patho- 
logical — point of view. Lenin's manner of treat- 
ing the problems of philosophy is absolutely as- 
tounding. The works of the most abstract phil- 
osophers are treated from the point of view of 
Bolshevism so as to confound its adversaries. The 
poor philosophers of the past would be astonished 
to learn what Lenin was able to find in their doc- 
trines. 

Lenin quotes a very inoffensive article by Blei 
(" Metaphysics in Political Economy" in the 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS OF LENIN 47 

Vierteljdhrsschrift fur wissenschaftliche Philoso- 
phic) and accompanies his quotation with this 
remark: "The reader is probably annoyed at our 
quoting at such length this gibberish of incredible 
platitude, this pseudo-scientific nonsense served 
up in the terminology of Avenarius. But, as the 
German proverb has it, 'He who would understand 
the enemy must visit the enemy's country'; and 
the philosophic review of Avenarius is a real 
enemy country for Marxians. ' ' 

It is therefore clear that Lenin was interested 
in philosophy exactly as an enemy is interested 
in an enemy. He "studied" — that is to say, he 
glanced through — a pile of books on philosophy, 
for the same reason that German officers studied — 
and more seriously — the Kussian language. 

The style of the quotation just given is that of 
Lenin's whole book. I will pick out a few exam- 
ples at random: 

"In philosophy the kiss of Wilhelm Schuppe is 
not worth any more than that of Peter Struve or 
of Menchikov 2 in politics" (p. 71). . . . "Mach 
approaches Marxism here as Bismarck approached 
the labor movement, or as Archbishop Evlogy 3 
approached democracy" ... (p. 155). "Lunat- 
charsky says: 4 'A wonderful page in religious 

2 A Russian reactionary publicist recently shot by the Bol- 
shevists. 

3 A prelate known for his reactionary views. 

4 Lenin says (p. 400), with a horror worthy of Homais, 
that "comrade Lunatcharsky is beginning to talk of religion." 



48 LENIN 

economy : I say this at the risk of making an irre- 
ligious reader laugh. ' Whatever your good inten- 
tions may be, comrade Lunatcharsky, your coquet- 
teries with religion only call forth a smile" (p. 
217). "And here are similar German Menchi- 
kovs [he is referring to Schubert-Soldern], ob- 
scurantists as pure as Benouvier, all living in 
concubinage with the empirocriticists" (p. 249). 
. . . " That the author of such a remark [Henri 
Poincare] may be an eminent natural philosopher 
we can readily admit. But it cannot be denied that 
only a Iuchevitch could take him seriously as a 
philosopher. . . . You are wrong, Monsieur 
Poincare ; your works prove that there are people 
in existence who can think only of things that 
have no sense" (pp. 350-351). . . . "I will con- 
fine myself to showing up the article of our em- 
inent Black-Band philosopher, Lopatin. 5 . . . 
The idealist true-Russian philosopher, Lopatin, is 
to the contemporary idealists of Europe what the 
Alliance of Eussian People is to the reactionary 
parties of the West" (p. 360). "Hermann Kohen 
. . . goes so far as to preach the introduction 

Whatever value may be attached to the researches of Lu- 
natcharsky on "religious economy," it is astonishing 1 that 
Lenin should have entrusted the portfolio of education to 
such a dangerous clerical. It is at least just as unwise as 
entrusting foreign affairs to Trotsky, whom Lenin called a 
"bourgeois opportunist" in 1915. 

5 Professor Lopatin is a philosopher as well-known in Rus- 
sia as Schuppe, Schubert-Soldern, Mach and Kohen in Ger- 
many. The terms Black-Bands, Real-Russian and Alliance 
of the Russian People were given to men and organizations 
of extreme and brutal reaction at the time of Nicholas II. 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS OF LENIN 49 

of higher mathematics into the lycees in order to 
fill the students with the spirit of idealism which 
our materialistic era deprives them of. . . . This 
is certainly the wild dream of a reactionary. . . . 
But it is extremely interesting ... to see by 
what skillful means the representatives of the 
educated bourgeoisie try to conserve, or find a 
small place for, the fideism 6 engendered in the 
masses by the ignorance, the servitude, and the 
foolish savagery of capitalistic contradictions" 
(p. 371). . . . "The Eussian natural philosopher, 
Chwolson, went to Germany to publish a cowardly 
Black-Band 7 pamphlet against Haeckel" (p. 422). 

One's emotions on reading things like this in a 
"philosophical work" are varied enough. For 
my part, they fill me chiefly with terror at the 
thought that this man, who con siderj* himself an 
apostle of the future and who in reality has the 
psychology of a monk of the Middle Ages, is to- 
day the absolute master of a hundred million 
people ! 

It would be childish to criticize Lenin's "system 
of philosophy." Moreover, he does not claim any 
originality in this realm and always emphasizes 

6 Fideism," Lenin says, "is the doctrine which gives faith 
the place of knowledge, or which, in general, attributes a cer- 
tain importance to faith." Lenin has no idea that he is him- 
self one of the most successful "fideists." 

7 Chwolson, professor of Physics at the University of Pe- 
trograd, had a discussion with Ernest Haeckel on questions 
of scientific philosophy which had no relation to politics. 



SO LENIN 

the fact that he subscribes wholly to the doctrine 
of "dialectic materialism." 8 

The Bible of this doctrine is not even the writ- 
ings of Marx, but Engel's " Anti-Duhring" (Herm 
Eugen Dulirings Umivahung in der Wissenscliaft) 
which Lenin considers the first and last word of 
human wisdom. It is ad majorem gloriam of the 
doctrine of Bolshevised "dialectic materialism" 
that he denounces the crimes of philosophers such 
as Hume, Kant, Berkeley, Avenarius, or Renou- 
vier, and criticizes the natural philosophers: "the 
German Mach, the French Henri Poincare, the 
Belgian 9 Duhem" (p. 365) as well as the traitors 
and deserters of Russian materialism. 

The general tenor of his elucubrations is as 
follows : 

Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Mach, Poincare and 
others, as good servants of the bourgeoisie, have 
expounded doctrines repellant to common sense in 
order to keep the proletariat enslaved. Lenin 
enthusiastically quotes a tirade against these 
philosophers which has immortalized its author, 
Laf argue, "a pupil of Engels" (p. 237) : 

8 We must do Lenin this much justice : he has not the 
mania for keeping "up to the minute," which is the rage in 
the camp of his collaborators and suits them so well. The 
Bolshevists hardly know how to read and write; but they 
are cubists in art, futurists in literature, and would be in- 
sulted if one accused them of being vieux jeu in anything 
whatsoever. 

9 For the sake of symmetry probably Lenin calls the fa- 
mous philosopher of Bordeaux a Belgian. 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS OF LENIN 51 

"The workingman who eats sausages and gets 
live francs a day knows, and knows very well, 
first that his employer is cheating him, and sec- 
ond that he is eating pork ; or he knows first that 
his employer is a robber and second that sausages 
are nourishing and have a pleasant taste. But 
not at all, says a bourgeois sophist named Pierson, 
Hume, or Kant, as you will: the workingman's 
opinion on that subject is his personal opinion, 
something purely subjective; in other words he 
would have been equally right in thinking that 
the employer is his benefactor and that sausages 
are hashed leather ; for he cannot know the thing 
in its elf.' ' 

There are, however, sophists and sophists. 
Lenin has some indulgence for Kant, whom he 
takes for a kind of intermediary between the 
idealists and the materialists. "When Kant ad- 
mits that something which is outside of us (a 
certain thing in itself) corresponds to our ideas, 
he is a materialist. But when Kant declares that 
this thing in itself is inconceivable and transcend- 
ent, he is an idealist." Kant would therefore be 
a kind of bourgeois "center," like the Cadet Party 
(the comparison is Lenin's, of course) : "The fol- 
lowers of Mach criticize him from the right, we 
criticize him from the left" (p. 231). Mach is a 
much more wicked sophist in Lenin 's eyes. ' ' The 
philosophy of the learned Mach is to science what 



52 LENIN 

the kiss 10 of the Christian Judas was to Christ. ' ' 
Lenin does not treat his party colleagues any 
better when they show some indulgence for "fide- 
ist" doctrines. 

Hence he gives terrible warning to Lunatchar- 
sky who " stooped to disgraceful assertions (p. 
418) of a fideism which, if he were frank and 
consistent, would place its author on the level of 
a Peter Struve." (Lenin, as I said before, over- 
looked no opportunity for abusing Struve.) 

This brief outline of Lenin's philosophy would 
not be complete without quoting some pearls from 
another book on "philosophy" which appeared 
almost at the same time as Lenin's and which is 
written in very much the same spirit by one of 
his comrades in the Bolshevist Party, Chouliati- 
kov. 11 This book is even more interesting than 
Lenin's own work: in the first place it is more 
calm, more academic. Lenin scolds, rages and 
thunders against the bourgeois philosophers. In 
Chouliatikov 's book there is not a single vulgar 
word: quietly and methodically he denounces the 
great philosophers, and discards them one and all 
with scientific serenity. Lenin deals chiefly with 
modern philosophy while Chouliatikov goes all the 
way back to Descartes (and after all why should 

10 Play on the word "kiss" is one of Lenin's favorite liter- 
ary embellishments. 

11 V. Chouliatikov, The Justification of Capitalism in West- 
ern European Philosophy, From Descartes to Mach (in 
Russian), Moscow, 1908. 



it 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS OF LENIN 53 

this old reactionary be handled with gloves?). 
Moreover, Chouliatikov is, if possible, even more 
consistent than Lenin, which adds to the patho- 
logical interest of his book. The ideas and meth- 
ods of the two authors, however, are very nearly 
alike. 

It is generally thought," Chouliatikov begins, 

that philosophy is a very innocent thing. Peo- 
ple commonly fail to see in it a weapon to be used 
against the working class. That is the most naive 
and deplorable mistake that can be made. Phil- 
osophy is no lucky exception; on the sacred 
'heights of speculation ' the bourgeoisie remains, 
as elsewhere, ever true to itself. It speaks of 
nothing but its own immediate gains and the ten- 
dencies of its own class ; but it talks a very special 
language and one which is hard to make head or 
tail of. Without exception all the terms and phil- 
osophic formulae with which it operates — all its 
'elements,' 'ideas/ 'conceptions,' 'presentations,' 
'senses,' 'absolutes,' 'things in themselves,' 'phe- 
nomena,' 'modes,' 'attributes,' 'subjects,' 'ob- 
jects,' 'souls,' 'material elements,' 'forces,' and 
'energies' — help it to identify and distinguish 
social classes, groups, and their reciprocal rela- 
tions" (p. 6). They are so many "conventional 
signs." 

Just as many officers spend years deciphering 
the code signals of the enemy, Chouliatikov set 
himself the task of learning the code of bourgeois, 



•54 LENIN 

philosophy and of bringing to light the secrets 
l>y means of which the philosophers, in the pay 
of capital, have been able to cheat the proletariat 
for centuries. And his book does indeed reveal 
the most carefully guarded mysteries of bourgeois 
philosophy. 

The proletariat can learn, for example, that 
"according to the system of Descartes, the world 
is organized like a manufacturing enterprise ' ' and 
that "the Cartesian concept of man is a repro- 
duction of the organization of a factory" (p. 27). 
The conception of time with the same philosopher 
is the result of an "innovation brought in by in- 
dustry,' ' of which, as the author confides, some 
idea can be had from the description given in the 
16th century by a certain Meudorger of the typo- 
graphical plant of the Kobergers where the work- 
ers had to start working at a "fixed hour" (p. 30). 
Spinoza is presented in a still worse light: Spi- 
noza's concept of the world is "a hymn to tri- 
umphant capital, to capital which absorbs and 
centralizes everything! ... A sublime, an en- 
chanted system! — such is the almost universal 
idea of the Spinozian concept of the world. . . . 
A man far removed from all earthly thoughts, 
the ideal type of the thinker devoted entirely to 
pure speculation! This is the almost universal 
idea of the personality of Spinoza. . . . But . . . 
when Spinoza died, the hearse which carried his 
remains was, as everybody knows, accompanied 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS OF LENIN 55 

with great pomp by the flower of the Dutch bour- 
geoisie; and if we look more closely at the circle 
of his friends and acquaintances we find there the 
flower of the bourgeoisie not only of the Nether- 
lands, but of the whole world. The bourgeoisie 
thought of Spinoza as its 'bard' " (p. 42). 

After this the reader will not be astonished to 
learn that "the God of Liebniz is the proprietor 
of a wonderfully organized factory" and that the 
"philosophy of Liebniz is the deification of the 
constructive genius of the manufacturing inter- 
ests" (p. 45). But the most notorious represen- 
tatives of "manufacturist thought" are Hume 
and, especially, Kant (pp. 72-79): "As long as 
the elasticity of the manufacturist capital of the 
18th century is not very great . . . the icleal- 
ogist of the German bourgeoisie [Kant] finds it 
possible to defend the static conception of the 
soul" (p. 79). Chouliatikov has also revealed the 
secret meaning of Fichte's syllogisms: "They are 
a hymn to specialization: differentiation between 
concept and function" (p. 92). 

Nor does he hide from us the fact that the whole 
of contemporary philosophy serves to justify mod- 
ern capitalism. "The doctrine of Avenarius on 
coordination, that of Mach on the relation between 
the physical and the psychic, that of Wundt on 
object representation, all are doctrines of the 
same sort, examples of the solution of the same 
problem put before the ideologists of the van- 



56 LENIN 

guard of the capitalistic bourgeoisie — examples 
of attempts to reproduce by means of philosophic 
symbols the way in which the bourgeoisie explains 
the increase, and, at the same time, the defeat of 
the forces of its organizing geniuses ! ' ' 

The reader who comes across this gibberish will 
probably enjoy a few moments of subdued mirth. 
Let him not forget, however, that we are here 
confronted by a manifestation of a mania for per- 
secution which, under certain political conditions, 
can prove to be far from inoffensive. So long as 
it is a question of accusations brought against 
Spinoza and Leibniz all this is not very serious. 
But we must realize that Eussia is governed to- 
day by Chouliatikovs, that Lenin is a Chouliatikov, 
and that the Extraordinary Commission — in addi- 
tion to all kinds of common bandits— is made up 
of a goodly number of Chouliatikovs. I am not 
exaggerating when I say that thousands of Eus- 
sians were shot by the Bolshevists on accusations 
of counter-revolutionary conspiracy just as well 
grounded as the charges of a secret alliance be- 
tween Spinoza and the bourgeoisie of the world, 
or the attributions of a "manufacturist" char- 
acter to the philosophy of Liebniz and Kant. 

Without making Lenin responsible for all the 
"philosophic" notions of Chouliatikov, we can 
see exactly the same mentality working in the two 
authors ; and we can well understand that the com- 
ing into absolute power of a man who was able 



THE PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS OF LENIN 57 

to write such a book is a very serious danger to 
our thirty centuries of civilization. For what, 
indeed, is the difference between Lenin and the 
Kaliph Omar who burned the library of Alexan- 
dria? "If these books contain what is in the 
Koran they are useless. If they contain what is 
not in the Koran they are harmful I ' ' If you sub- 
stitute the word "Anti-Duhring" for the word 
"Koran," you will have the exact attitude of 
Lenin. Moreover, he has said himself that "books 
will be the undoing of the social revolution, ' ' and 
he was perfectly right. If he were disposed to be 
absolutely consistent today, if his actions were 
not limited to some extent by the more enlightened 
influence of Lunatcharsky and others, to what fur- 
ther trials would unhappy Eussia not be exposed? 
In the Soviet Republic the natural sciences might 
be tolerated at a hazard ; for a Judas Mach would 
not be able to exploit them for reactionary deduc- 
tion. But mathematics, which are infected with 
the germ of idealism, might present some danger. 
Philosophy and the humanities would be forbid- 
den outright; for the Humes and Kants have no 
other aim but that of cheating the worker at the 
pleasure of the employer who gives them their 
pay. As for the Avenariuses, the Schubert- 
Solderns, and the Menchekovs, their place would 
obviously be in prison . . . unless they were to 
be shot, as the real Menchekov was actually shot. 
The affair of the "cowardly" Chwolson and of 



58 LENIN 

the " Black-Band' ? Lopatin would directly con- 
cern the Extraordinary Commission in its strug- 
gle against counter-revolution, against speculation, 
and against philosophy. It must be seen to that 
professors teach only what is in the "Anti-Diihr- 
ing." As for art, it is, in its very essence, abso- 
lutely "Meistic," and as such would be merci- 
lessly suppressed! 

Do not imagine that this is an exaggeration of 
Lenin's views. What other conclusion could be 
consistently reached by one who knows all the 
truth, the supreme truth ; and who calls everything 
which does not agree with the truth, to be mad, 
reactionary and ' ' cowardly. ' ' The Shakespearian 
imagination of Ernest Eenan conceived the ter- 
rible spectre of a savage threatening civilization, 
of a drunken Caliban taking vengeance on every- 
thing that came his way. Bolshevism is the 
realization of that dark vision. Calibanism in 
philosophy! Cannibalism in politics! That is 
what Lenin has given to the world. 



CHAPTER V 

PROPHECIES IN GENERAL AND THOSE OF LENIN 
IN PARTICULAR 

REALIZE that in this chapter I must attack 
A a legend which seems to be indestructible: in 
the minds of many people, often of people who are 
far from being his admirers, Lenin remains ' ' the 
man who foresaw everything. ' ' 

Not long ago Humanite, the French socialist 
organ, published the following statement which 
shows a certain phase of the voluntary blindness 
one notes in the Parisian cult of Russian heroes : 

"More than a year ago," says Humanite ', "at 
the time when Viscount Grey was publishing his 
pamphlets on the League of Nations, the People's 
Commissar, Lenin, denounced him as the instru- 
ment of Anglo-Saxon plutocracy. Lenin has a 
genius for sensing unsuspected connections be- 
tween things, though he paints them so black that 
his revelations, because of the surprise they cre- 
ate, often find many of us incredulous at first. 
But as time goes on and as we become more famil- 
iar with the style and thought of this great mind, 
we eventually have to admit that besides a rich 
and highly-developed philosophic insight, he has 

59 



60 LENIN 

a keenness of perception which alone would make 
him one of the most famous statesmen in history. 
The article from the Times which follows is a 
complete justification of Lenin's prophecy.' ' 

This extraordinary preface is followed by a 
quotation from the Times, which says that Eussia 
must choose between "becoming a part of the 
family of nations," or "falling into the position 
of being a vassal of Germany." Without touch- 
ing upon this question in any way, we may express 
some astonishment at the fact that denuncia- 
tions of the "bourgeois" foundation of Viscount 
Grey's ideas, which during the war were common 
enough in the Socialist Press of Germany, should 
be considered as proof of Lenin's genius, of his 
"powerful mentality," "philosophic insight," and 
"keenness of perception." Moreover, all the 
praise of the Bolshevist leader's genius for polit- 
ical prophecy is practically of the same character. 

When one asks Lenin's admirers for details of 
his prophecies, they usually say that the Bolshe- 
vist leader predicted that the war would end with 
the revolution. 

I do not dispute this claim of his to glory 
(granted that it is one) ; nor do I dispute the fact 
that he has a certain narrow-minded sagacity. I 
think, however, that he has shown this much more 
brilliantly in other matters (especially in his 
leadership of the Bolshevist movement) than in 
this famous prophecy. 



PROPHECIES 61 

For indeed, what was it to predict that the Euro- 
pean war would end in a revolution? What was 
it to say that "the guns of the proletariat of every 
country will be turned in a very different direc- 
tion from that in which the aggressors of the im- 
perialistic bourgeoisie would wish to see them 
turned f" 

This is only repeating a commonplace of rev- 
olutionary talk, one which was familiar every- 
where before the war, in all propaganda pam- 
phlets, in all speeches at Socialistic meetings, and 
on all occasions when people discussed questions 
of capitalist politics, colonial enterprises, arma- 
ments, disarmaments, the chauvinism of the bour- 
geoisie, or the brotherhood of the proletariat. 
Lenin remembered this platitude at the time the 
Great War broke out ; and it is on this little exer- 
cise of memory — let us admit it was a lucky guess 
■ — that people are basing his claim to immortality 
today. For that matter, we must remember that 
Lenin shares this title of "seer" with Zinoviev; 1 
and yet everybody knows from all accounts, the 
limitations, as regards foresight, of Lenin's dis- 
tinguished alter ego. 

The prophecies — by all sorts of people — relat- 
ing to the great tragedy which began August 1, 
1914, generally fall into three distinct classes: 

1 The articles which these two writers published in Switzer- 
land during the war were compiled in Petrograd in 1918, in a 
large volume which bears the title "Against the Current/' 
The name of Zinoviev ctfmes before that of Lenin. 



62 LENIN 

1. Most of the witnesses of this drama, men 
of all parties and intellectual leanings, thought 
that this war wonld develop like all others; that 
there wonld be victories and defeats, victors and 
vanquished, secret negotiations and open nego- 
tiations; that there wonld first be an armistice and 
then a treaty of peace ; after which life wonld go 
on again pretty mnch as it did before the war. 
Opinion, of conrse, was very mnch divided on the 
question as to which of tire two coalitions wonld 
be victorious ; everybody also thought that the war 
would be infinitely shorter than it turned out 
to be. 

In this class (in the pro-Ally camp as well as 
among the pro- Germans) there were a majority 
and a minority. It was the majority view to 
believe — and sincerely — in the possibility of a 
" righteous ' ' victory and a "righteous" peace. 
The Fourteen Points had not yet been formulated ; 
but the political aspirations which later found a 
badly written expression in the program of Pres- 
ident Wilson were in evidence in both camps. 
People did not agree as to which side represented 
"righteousness"; but in any event, "righteous- 
ness" was to prevail. 

On the contrary, the minority, "those who re- 
fused to be fooled," attached much less impor- 
tance to "righteousness." They believed, often 
without caring to proclaim it too openly, that 
victory would be the triumph of force; and that 



PROPHECIES 63 

the war would not only be very nrach like all 
other wars, but that the peace which would mark 
its end would be very much like all other pacifi- 
cations: the triumph, that is, of the national ra- 
pacities of the victors. They were certain that 
the " noble candor" of the men who were looking 
for noon at ten o'clock in the morning, and for 
justice where there could be no justice, would be 
disappointed once more. 

Now, as is well known, nobody, except every- 
body, has more wit than Voltaire. Taken all in 
all, everybody was more or less right. The war, 
as both majority and minority expected, had its 
victories and its defeats, its conferences and its 
Armistice; and finally its Treaty of Versailles 
which, while it incarnated the victory of the 
" righteous,' ' as half the world believed, is not 
as the cynics predicted, without some likeness to 
that of Brest-Litovsk or to those of Frankfort 
or Campo-Formio. The Paris Conference, with 
its mysterious Councils of "Four" and "Ten," 
was not very different from other assemblies of 
the kind; it was practically the Congress of 
Vienna — without the fancy dress balls. 

Nevertheless, from a more general point of 
view, both the "majority" and the "minority" 
were not quite right. They mistook the scale of 
the great war. They failed to grasp the reality 
of those phenomena which bear the names of 
Bolshevism, civil war, and Terror. Whatever the 
outcome of these formidable disturbances, which 



64, LENIN 

are to be noted in some form everywhere, Europe 
will not be the Europe it was before. In this 
sense the late war was decidedly not like other 
wars. 

2. But to other observers the question of the 
World War had a very different aspect. They 
took no stock in the " righteous peace" business; 
but neither did they think that this war was like 
other wars. They thought that it would lead to 
revolutions as savage and bloody as the war 
itself. But not convinced of any Providential 
mission assigned to the proletariat, they expected 
only an increase in universal savagery to result 
from the world conflict. A priori they could not 
grant that a catastrophe such as the World War 
could have any really good results, whether in 
progress toward the brotherhood of the peoples 
or in increased material well-being brought about 
by revolutionary changes in the economic regime. 
In their eyes the idealists who thought that uni- 
versal brotherhood would be the outcome of the 
most bloody of all wars were being as roundly 
fooled as the " realists' ' of the various imperial- 
istic schools who expected victory to bring an 
increase in the riches of their respective coun- 
tries. To expect five years of savagery to en- 
gender the brotherhood of man was, in their view, 
as naive as to think a Berlin-to-Bagdad Railway 
would pay the billions the war would cost. 

The people in this category were, as the event 
proved, those nearest the truth. I trust I may 



PROPHECIES 65 

be allowed to make that statement although I 
am of their number. 2 

Yes, they were right in saying that nothing 
good could come out of the world catastrophe; 
and that, if this war ended in a decisive victory 
for either side, the victor would impose his stern 
will on the vanquished without bothering much 
about justice and ethnographical frontiers. Yes, 
they were right in saying that the brutality of 
the human animal, which was let loose in 1914, 
would of necessity give a stamp of horror to 
those subsequent convulsive movements which 
the Zimmerwaldians had heralded as "liberating 
revolutions.' ' Yes, they were right in pointing 
out, at the height of the military successes of the 
Germans in 1918, when Hindenburg's army was 
at Chateau-Thierry and when German imperial- 
ism seemed to be triumphant, the great fragility 
of this triumph and of the entire political struc- 
ture of Bismarck. Yes, they were right in think- 
ing, with Lenin and contrary to opinion in gen- 
eral, that revolution was a great probability in 
the country which suffered most from the war. 
And the near future will show that they were 
all right, as against Lenin, in holding that 
the communist regime could not become firmly 
grounded in a ruined and devastated Europe ; and 
that its famous social revolution, the "last revo- 

2 I developed these ideas in an article entitled "The Drag- 
on," written at the beginning of the war; and in my book 
Armageddon (July, 1918), in which that article was incor- 
porated. 



66 LENIN 

lution," was just as absurd, and even more savage 
and hateful, than the "last war!" 

In view of the abstract evidence for such 
prophecies and their generality in bearing, there 
is no ground for vanity in having made any one 
of them. I consider the historical prophet, in a 
true sense of the word, an impossibility, except 
for a few exceptional cases. So long as philoso- 
phers have not found any way of disposing of 
"His Majesty Chance," we will have to give that 
gentleman credit for a very great part in the 
direction of human affairs! For that reason, 
when we hear that So-and-so "foresaw everything 
from the first day of the war," we are, a priori, 
dealing with a legend. 

3. Lenin and his few acolytes made up the 
third class of intellectuals in 1914. They believed 
that the World War would end in a world revo- 
lution which would overthrow the capitalist 
regime and set up the era of communism in its 
stead. 

From the beginning of the war, Lenin expressed 
his ideas on the course that should be taken, as 
follows : 

"War is not an accident nor a sin as the Chris- 
tian popes (who like all opportunists preach 
patriotism, humanitarianism and pacifism) be- 
lieve; but an inevitable part of capitalism, as 
legitimate a form of capitalistic life as peace. 
The war of the present day is a war of peoples. 
... Conscientious objectionism, strikes against 



PROPHECIES 67 

war, and all such stuff are utter rot — a miserable, 
cowardly pipe-dream! What idiot believes that 
an armed bourgeoisie can be whipped without a 
fight? It is sheer lunacy to talk of abolishing 
capitalism without a terrible civil war or a series 
of terrible civil wars! The duty of socialism 
rather is to agitate for the class struggle during 
war. The task of turning a war between peoples 
into a war between classes should be the only 
concern of socialism, when an armed imperialistic 
conflict arises between the bourgeoisies of the 
various nations. Away with this sentimental, 
hypocritical and foolish claptrap of " peace at 
any price !" Up with the flag of civil war! 

"The Second International is dead, the victim 
of opportunism! . . . The Third International 
inherits the task of organizing the forces of the 
proletariat for a revolutionary attack upon the 
capitalistic governments, for civil war against 
the bourgeoisie of all nations, for the attainment 
of political power, and for the victory of social- 
ism !" 3 

As for the immediate causes of the catastrophe, 
Lenin seemed to believe, along with a general ac- 
cusation against international capitalism, that the 
war was a defensive war for Germany who was 
threatened on all sides. 

"We know," he said, "that for scores of 
years three brigands (the bourgeoisie and gov- 

3 N. Lenin, The Social-Democrat, No. 39, November 11, 
1914. 



68 LENIN 

ernments of England, France and Eussia) were 
preparing to attack Germany.. Should we be 
surprised because two of the brigands started the 
attack before the three received the new knives 
they had ordered?" 4 

Hence the socialists should attack the two 
coalitions of brigands at the same time. This is 
the general idea which influenced Lenin's policies 
on the extreme left at Zimmerwald and Kienthal, 
where his influence was predominant. From this 
point of view he did not deviate, in theory; 
though, practically, his action was useful to Ger- 
many, since his work of disorganization attained 
in no Teutonic country the degree of perfection 
it reached in Eussia. 

However, to repeat, this theory of Lenin was a 
commonplace in revolutionary pamphlets before 
the war. For real prophecies — and here I direct- 
ly approach the legend I mentioned above — for 
real prophecies, however vague and general in 
language, one looks in vain in the articles of 
Lenin dealing with this period. He gives only 
imperatives: he did not foresee; nor did he even 
try to foresee, the course political events were to 
take; although he hoped, of course, that they 
would tend toward world revolution. He was not 
even sure that the proletariat would follow him: 

"We cannot guess," he wrote in 1916, "no one 
can guess, just how large a section of the pro- 

4 N. Lenin, "The Russian Sudekums" (in Russian) , in The 
Social-Democrat, February 1, 1915. 



PROPHECIES 69 

letariat will go over to the Socialist-chauvinists 
and the Opportunists. That, the summons to bat- 
tle, the call for the social revolution, alone can 
tell. But we know one thing for certain: the 
* defenders of the flag' in imperialistic wars rep- 
resent only a minority of the population." 5 

It is therefore pure fiction to say that " Lenin 
from the very first day of the war foresaw the 
outcome of events." He did not foresee even 
the attitude of the western socialists toward the 
catastrophe. Zinoviev reports that he had a dis- 
cussion with Lenin on this latter subject in which 
Lenin thought that the German socialists would 
vote against the military appropriations; while 
Zinoviev was sure that they would refrain from 
voting at all. As the event proved, they voted 
for the appropriations. 

Now, if Lenin was so far off the track in judg- 
ing the temper of the Second International, he is 
quite possibly mistaken as to the internal stabil- 
ity of the Third. In the mass of writings he pub- 
lished in Switzerland (and later in Russia) in 
1914-1917, there are not many political prophe- 
cies. Most of them are false: as, for instance, 
his famous postulate that the war would end by 
the fraternizing (bratanie) of the soldiers at the 
front. The Russian army disintegrated in 1917; 
the Bulgarian, Austrian, Turkish and German 
armies met with the same fate a year later; but 

5 N. Lenin, "The Order for Disarmament" (in Russian), in 
The Social-Democrat, No. 2, October, 1916. 



70 LENIN 

there was never any serious question of fraterni- 
zation between enemies. It was a case of con- 
quered soldiers taking to their heels to get away 
from victorious soldiers. 

We do not blame Lenin for not having been a 
better guesser. But since people say that he 
" predicted everything,' ' I am merely setting the 
matter right. Lenin has shown his political 
talents, not in prophecy, but in his skill at turn- 
ing the great mass of hatreds that the war built 
up to the benefit of his own ideas. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE PERSONALITY OF LENIN 

LENIN is a man who combines ideas which he 
believes to be the ideas of the future with 
a mentality that belongs to the Middle Ages. 

We must first deal as cavalierly with one of 
the slanders against Lenin as we dealt with one 
of the fictions invented to glorify him. People 
saw, or pretended to see, in Lenin a paid agent 
of the Germans. That is absolutely false. Lenin 
did more for Germany (in signing the Treaty of 
Brest-Litovsk) than all her paid agents put to- 
gether; but a German agent he never was. He 
never served Germany for the sake of serving 
Germany (which, by the way is more than can 
be said for all of his associates and subordinates). 

He did not touch a cent of German money for 
himself. I have not the shadow of a doubt on 
this point. Why, indeed, should he have done 
so? He has always lived frugally, not to say in 
hardship ; people who have known him for a long 
time cannot point to a single indulgence, to a 
single extravagance, habitual to him. Nowadays 
when the Bolshevists have millions within reach 
and while the most scandalous rumors (often well 
authenticated) are circulating about his col- 

71 



72 LENIN 

leagues, no one breathes a word against Lenin. 
In a flock of black sheep, he is "the Bolshevist 
who has remained poor." He has won general 
admiration for his scrupulous honesty. 

Did he take German money for his propaganda ? 

I must say that in 1917 socialists who had 
known him for a long while and who had formerly 
been his friends (I could mention some very well- 
known names) were frank to say that they con- 
sidered this not only possible but very probable. 
One of them put himself on record to that 
effect: "For the ' Cause/ Lenin would steal a 
pocketbook, if necessary. He would stop at 
nothing if he considered it beneficial to the revo- 
lution." Such is the almost unanimous opinion 
of his intimates, who, despite party animosities, 
have always been the first to recognize his per- 
sonal disinterestedness. 

History may perhaps discover a final answer 
to this question some day. Meanwhile impar- 
tiality obliges us to mention two facts that seem 
to weaken this "German money" charge. 

Today all the German archives, all the records 
of secret expenditures abroad, 1 whether by the 
military or by the civil authorities, are at the 
disposal of the present German Government, 
which has good reason for not liking the Bol- 
shevists. If these archives contained documents 
or evidence at all compromising to Lenin, why 

1 To those who know Germany, there cannot be any doubt 
as to the existence of a model system of accounting for the 
most secret expenditures. 



THE PERSONALITY OF LENIN 73 

should Scheidemann, Bauer, David and Miiller, 
not make use of them? Why should they spare 
such a dangerous adversary? 2 

Moreover, General Ludendorf who, as dictator, 
must have known what was going on, said nothing 
in his memoirs about money which Lenin is al- 
leged to have received from Germany. He even 
considers it a mistake on the part of the civil 
authorities to have granted the Bolshevist leader 
the famous "pass" in March, 1917. 3 

One might answer that Scheidemann and Bauer, 
as well as Ludendorf, probably have too much 
respect for state secrets of such importance to 
reveal them lightly. As it is not so absolutely 
certain that the late war is to be the last, Germany 
may still need the help of all kinds of secret 
agents in the future. So, under such circum- 
stances, it would not be wise to reveal, for any 
reason whatsoever, the names of those who once 
were of service to her. And, indeed, so far as 
I know, the government of democratic Germany 
has taken no action against those numerous 
agents in all countries who were paid for service 

2 It goes without saying that the German Government 
could have nothing to gain by compromising a Ganetzky or 
any other poor wretch of Russian Bolshevism. To publish 
such expenditures would serve no positive purpose; and it 

* would have been an obvious mistake to show up the venality 
of the lesser Bolshevist agents. 

3 There is this much truth in General Ludeudorf's judg- 
ment on this point: since the great service which Lenin did 
for Germany could not save her from disintegration and^ de- 
feat, it would have been better for her not to push things 
quite so far in Russia. 



74 LENIN 

rendered the government of imperialistic Ger- 
many. 4 

So, unquestionable as is the role which Germans 
played in the development of Bolshevism in Rus- 
sia, 5 it cannot be said that Lenin received money 
from the Government of William II. 

What can be said with certainty is that in all 
his policies, before as well as after the Eevolution, 
he has shown absolute political immorality. 

Nothing exists for him except his idea. He 
has no other rule of conduct except the interests 
of the cause of Bolshevism. The bad faith he so 
often showed in his opposition days is equalled 
only by the cool versatility of his policies at the 
head of the Bolshevist government. What did 
he not say against Kerensky for having applied 
the death penalty at the front to preserve dis- 
cipline? Well, a few months later, without any 
reason whatsoever, he is shooting tens of thou- 
sands of men himself. Trusting that any liberties 
with the truth were possible in view of the age- 
long ignorance of the Russian people, he did not 

4 It was only by mischance that von Jagow's telegram, 
which served as a basis for charges against Judet, fell into 
the hands of the Allied powers. Nevertheless, in that case 
also, it was to the advantage of the Germans to make things 
disagreeable for the French nationalists, their life-long ene- 
mies. 

. 5 # Trotsky innocently gives the following account of con- 
ditions on the Russian front before the Bolshevist revolution 
(The Advent of Bolshevism, p. 63): "Circulating among 
the soldiers were a number of sheets which they wrote them- 
selves in which they were invited not to stay in the trenches 
longer than 'from now till the first snow flies.' " Written by 
themselves, you see! The Germans and the Bolshevists did 
not figure in the matter at alll 



THE PERSONALITY OF LENIN 75 

mind if his accusations were always as stupid 6 as 
they were spiteful. 

I will quote, for an example, the fact that he 
charged the Constitutional-Democratic Party 
(The Cadets) with having organized the Pyanys 
Pogromy — the pillaging of the wine cellars of 
Petrograd. To appraise this accusation it is suf- 
ficient to name the party leaders : Miliukov, Nabo- 
kov, and Vinaver, all lawyers and university pro- 
fessors! As for the leader of this party, Lenin 
characterizes him in one of his speeches as an 
" absolutely, hopelessly, ignorant man." Many 
faults have been found with the strong person- 
ality of Miliukov; but this is the first time, I 
believe, that he has been accused of " ignorance.' ' 
Lenin, for that matter, has often acknowledged 
that he considers slander a legitimate weapon in 
political combat. 

But this slanderer is at the same time a despot ; 
and has always been one; today he rules as an 

6 He has a very close rival in Trotsky in the stupidity of 
his slanders. Here is an example: The Russian soldiers who 
came to Marseilles in 1916 assassinated one of their officers, 
Colonel Crause. It seems a copy of the paper which Trotsky 
was then publishing in Paris (Nache Slovo) was found in 
possession of one of these soldiers; and that was one of the 
reasons for the expulsion of Trotsky from France. Was 
Trotsky embarrassed? Not at all! Trotsky made a sensa- 
tional "statement" with reference to the matter: "The Rus- 
sian Government organized a little assassination in France 
through its agents-provocateurs in order to give weight to 
their argument against me." (See Twenty Letters of Leo 
Trotsky, Paris, 1919, p. 20.) That the Government of the 
Czar should have had one of its Colonels assassinated to 
give an argument in favor of deporting Trotsky to Spain is 
a discovery which seems to show the sheer folly of its author. 



76 LENIN 

autocrat over a country of a hundred million 
people, just as yesterday he ruled with iron hand 
over a dozen or more Eussian exiles in Switzer- 
land. His own colleagues and friends have often 
accused him of arbitrary and autocratic ways. In 
one of his old articles he ironically indexes the 
epithets which his comrades in the party gave 
him: "Autocrat, bureaucrat, Formalist, Central- 
ist, one-sided, pig-headed, stubborn, narrow, sus- 
picious, unsociable." 7 

We will not deny ourselves the pleasure of 
quoting an opinion which a man who is not sus- 
pected of anti-Bolshevism today, for it is no 
less than Mr. Trotsky himself, formerly had of 
Lenin. It is well known that this "brilliant un- 
derstudy" of the President of the Council of 
People's Commissars hates his chief, although he 
pays him the most elaborate compliments. This 
enmity does not date from yesterday, although 
it may be somewhat intensified today by jealousy 
on the part of the ambitious .man that Trotsky 
has become. 1 

I have before me a pamphlet 8 which Trotsky 
devoted to the Second Congress of the Social- 
Democratic Party, or, rather, to Lenin. I will 
make a few quotations from it: 

"History, with the ruthlessness of Shake- 
speare 's Shylock, has demanded its pound of flesh 

7 N. Lenin, One Step Forward, Two Steps Backwards (in 
Russian), Geneva, 1904, p. 137. 

8 Trotsky, The Second Congress of the Social-Democratic 
Labor Party in Russia (in Russian), Geneva, 1903. 



THE PERSONALITY OF LENIN 77 

from the living organism of the party. Alas! 
We have had to pay it! 9 

"We speak of the need for looking at history 
impersonally. But we need not push that virtue 
so far as to ignore the personal responsibility of 
Comrade Lenin. At the Second Congress of the 
Social-Democratic Party of Russia, that man, 
with all his energy and skill, played his role as 
disorganizer of the Party" (p. 11). 

" 'The state of siege' which Comrade Lenin 
insisted upon so energetically needs a strong 
authority. The practice of organized distrust 
needs an iron hand. The system of terror 10 is 
crowned by Robespierre. 

"Comrade Lenin mentally reviewed the per- 
sonnel of the Party and arrived at the conclusion 
that the iron hand needed was his own and his 
alone, and he was right. The hegemony of 
Social-Democracy in the struggle for freedom 
meant, from the very logic of the state of siege, 
the hegemonv of Lenin over Social-Democracy" 
(p. 20). 

"In demonstrating, before the Congress, the 
purpose of the Central Committee Comrade Lenin 
showed his fist (I am not speaking metaphorical- 
ly) as its real political symbol. We do not re- 

9 # Trotsky wrote then as he talks today. No audience can 
resist the grandiloquence of this Mirabeau of grocery clerks. 

10 All these terms had reference to the internal organiza- 
tion of the Social-Democratic Party; they had, so to speak, 
an ironical and symbolical meaning. Did Trotsky think that 
the time would come when terror, to himself and Lenin, 
would be anything but a symbol? 



78 LENIN 

member whether this pantomime for centraliza- 
tion was duly incorporated in the resolutions of 
the Congress. It was a serious oversight if such 
was not the case. That fist would have been the 
appropriate weather-vane for the entire edifice ! ' ' 
(p. 28). 

" Comrade Lenin made of the modest Council 
an all-powerful Committee of Public Safety in 
order to play, himself, the role of the * incor- 
ruptible Robespierre' " (p. 29). 

We know that Lenin, for his part, is not among 
the admirers of Trotsky. Without mentioning 
the affectionate remarks which he formerly hurled 
at Trotsky before and during the war, he wrote, 
in 1918, at the conclusion of the Peace of Brest- 
Litovsk, one of the bitterest arraignments (signed 
with the nom-de-plume of Karpov) of the cult 
for "grandiloquent hot-air' ' among revolution- 
ary orators — a cult of which Trotsky has always 
been the high priest. 

The despotism of Lenin and the absolute im- 
morality of his political conduct, which often 
seem cynically humorous, 11 have gradually alien- 
ated all the independent members of the Social- 
Democratic Party of Russia from him. He was 
formerly bound in warm friendship to Plek- 

11 We could quote as an example the delicious story of a 
certain inheritance which was finally put at the disposal of 
the Bolshevists, that is to say of Lenin. ^ I emphasize the fact 
that it is not a question of personal dishonesty. Lenin has 
always lived simply, though all the funds of the Party were 
at his beck and call. 



THE PERSONALITY OF LENIN 79 

hanov, 12 who later became his mortal enemy. 
Alexrod, Potressov, Alexinsky, and Martiv were 
all very intimate with him. But only docile, 
mediocre men, fawning courtesans like Zinoviev, 
have been able to enjoy the good- will of Lenin 
for any length of time. 

Even today he treats most of his distinguished 
colleagues as errand boys. In 1918, the Social- 
Eevolutionary paper, The People's Cause (Dielo 
Naroda), published an extraordinary reprimand 
which he addressed to Zinoviev, President of the 
Commune of Petrograd, who was guilty of let- 
ting a " bourgeois' ' reporter get into the Bol- 
shevist sanctuary at the Smolny Institute. He 
treats this high dignitary the way Peter the Great 
treated his gentlemen-in- waiting. 

Lenin, moreover, has always tolerated the 
worst characters about him. Today he is sur- 
rounded with all kinds of common criminals, es- 
pecially thieves. Incorruptible as he is person- 
ally, he seems to feel quite set up, in the midst 
of this ignoble crowd. In this respect his relations 
with Malinovsky are very interesting. Accord- 
ing to Bourtzev 13 Malinovsky confessed his past 
crimes to Lenin and went so far as to say he 
could no longer be a member of the Duma, as 
he was too severely compromised. Lenin is said 
to have interrupted him, refusing to hear the 
story out, and observing that "such things could 

12 "Lenin was in love with Plekhanov," says M. Zinoviev. 

13 Bourtzev, "Lenin and Malinovsky," in Struggling Rus- 
sia, No. 9-10, May, 1919, p. 139. 



80 LENIN 

be of no importance in the eyes of a real Bol- 
shevist. ' ' This story is probable enough : did not 
one of the best known Bolshevists, Badek, who 
was expelled from the German Social-Democratic 
Party (before the war), begin his political career 
by stealing a watch? What we refuse to believe 
is that Lenin conld have known or guessed Malin- 
ovsky 's role as an agent-provocateur ; though our 
assurance that he did comes from Malinovsky him- 
self. 14 

This weakness of the Bolshevist leader for the 
w T orst type of adventurers can easily be explained, 
however. Lenin's great strength, the strength 
which has made him the true prophet of our plunge 
to the depths of revolution, lies in his ability to ap- 
peal to the lowest instincts of human nature. The 
worst cynic would not have carried on a revolution 
any differently from this experienced agitator. 
For the work of destruction which the Bolshevist 
regime involved, he exploited with masterly hand 
the powerful social weapon which hatred supplies. 
For the benefit of his ideas he turned to account 
every animosity arising from the normal hard- 
ships of life increased by the additional hardship 
of the war — the hatred of the worker for the cap- 
italist, of the employee for his employer, of the 
peasant for the landed proprietor, of the prole- 
tarian Lett for the Lett of wealth, of the Chinese 

14 "According to Malinovsky, Lenin understood and could 
not help understanding that his ( Malinovsky 's) past con- 
cealed not merely ordinary criminality, but that he was, in 
the hands of the gendarmes, a provocateur** (Ibid., p. 139.) 



THE PERSONALITY OF LENIN 81 

coolie for the country which maltreated him, of 
the oppressed Jew for the Jew-baiter, and (above 
all) of the soldier and sailor for the officer who 
enforced harsh and irksome discipline. Hatred, 
hatred, nothing but hatred ! Such was the Archi- 
median lever which Lenin used to pry himself into 
power with such ease! But nothing permanent 
can be built on the foundation of hatred alone. 
Sooner or later Lenin will be the victim of the 
Frankenstein whose parts he assembled in order 
to master Russia ! 

But it would not be right to depreciate the re- 
markable qualities of the man. 

It is said that politics is a matter of the pen and 
of the tongue. Lenin, too, is a publicist and an 
orator. But as such he is only second rate. His 
pamphlets are badly and carelessly written. No 
translation, unfortunately, can render quite the 
banality of his style. He uses the most common- 
place metaphors, the most hackneyed expressions, 
and he indulges in epithets that show an extreme 
of vulgarity. 15 His writings accordingly are al- 
ways tiresome and hard to read, in spite of the 
psychological interest his sectarian logic might 
arouse. 

As we suggested, Lenin knows very little outside 
of political economy. Russian and European civil- 

15 I tried to count the number of times in one of Lenin's 
recent articles that the Menshevists and the Social-Revolu- 
tionists (many of whom spent several years in the convict- 
prisons) are treated as "lackies of the bourgeoisie;" but the 
task took too much time. 



82 LENIN 

izations are still strangers to him. In them he 
sees a manifestation of the capitalist world which 
he hates with all the violence and venom of which 
a fervent and narrow-minded man is capable. 
Maxim Kovalesky has said that Lenin would have 
made a good professor. He might have in polit- 
ical economy, were it not that he despises every 
idea not agreeing with his own. 

He speaks violently but without recourse to 
smooth periods, witty expressions, or impassioned 
flights. Trotsky and some of the other Bolshevist 
leaders are certainly far better orators than Lenin. 
A Bolshevist laborer, however, told me that he 
preferred the simple manner of Lenin to the 
musical sing-song of the nightingales of the Party. 
Can Lenin's be the real eloquence that scorns 
rhetoric? I suspect, rather, that it is a case of 
Lenin's profound knowledge of his audience; for 
he is a past-master of mob psychology. 

It cannot be denied that Lenin is a born leader, 
a magnificent " handler of men." I have often 
had the opportunity of witnessing the great influ- 
ence he has over people, especially people who 
from temperament, opinions, and social position, 
ought not easily have fallen prey to such a man. 
Let me, if I may, mention two cases which im- 
pressed me particularly. They deal with the first 
days of the triumph of the Bolshevists in 1917, 
and the people concerned were of a different 
stamp altogether from those who later succumbed 
tinder the spell of Lenin's personality. 



THE PERSONALITY OF LENIN 83 

The first case was that of a mechanic in a fac- 
tory in Petrograd, a man some fifty years old, a 
hard worker, father of a family of children, a 
calm, easy-going sort of fellow, not over-intelli- 
gent and qnite uneducated, but very honest withal. 
He called himself, and probably thought he was, 
a Revolutionary-Socialist; but like most of the 
workingmen of Petrograd he had been influenced 
since the spring of 1917 by the active and well or- 
ganized propaganda of the Bolshevists. The fac- 
tory was a very old-fashioned one; the workers 
for the most part were not skilled laborers, but 
peasants who had secured jobs there at the begin- 
ning of the war. Most of them could not have had 
any serious political convictions; but almost all 
called themselves either Menshevists or Revolu- 
tionary-Socialists. Those were the most moderate 
political parties to which a workman could de- 
cently belong ; and it was considered bad taste not 
to be a member of any party. Times have changed 
very much since then: today, it seems, the work- 
ingmen of Russia refuse to have anything to do 
with political parties! And with good reason! 
The Bolshevists were not very numerous at this 
time; but they formed a compact minority, re- 
ceived tactical instructions continually, and were 
able to browbeat the other men; suffice it to say 
that they managed to force all the workmen and 
foremen in the factory in question to subscribe 
to the Pravda, the Bolshevist newspaper run by 
Lenin. They themselves were bossed by a very 



84 LENIN 

intelligent and arrogant young workman who 
knew how to look after his own personal interests 
very well, and who had belonged to the Union of 
the Russian People (the " Black-Bands") before 
going over to Bolshevism! 

Immediately after the Bolshevist coup d'etat, 
the workers of this factory went to a local meet- 
ing and " swore allegiance to the new regime.' ' 
They worked out and adopted a pompous resolu- 
tion where the spelling was inclined to be some- 
what capricious but the meaning of which was 
perfectly clear: the former Revolutionary-Social- 
ists and Menshevists hailed the power of the 
Soviets, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the 
immediate conclusion of a general peace "without 
annexations and indemnities," and so on — all 
according to instructions received by the Bolshe- 
vist group in the factory. Hundreds of resolu- 
tions of this sort were being railroaded through 
all the factories and all the regiments in Petro- 
grad. 

The man of whom I am speaking was commis- 
sioned to carry this resolution to the Smolny 
Institute, which was then the seat of the Bolshe- 
vist Government. He took it there and was imme- 
diately received by Lenin himself, an attention 
the man had not in the least expected. The sly 
old demagogue, who was "too busy" to see the 
ambassadors of foreign powers, who later passed 
on Count Mirbach, the omnipotent German gov- 
ernor, to a clerk, Sverdlov, designating the latter, 



THE PERSONALITY OF LENIN 85 

ironically, as the "highest official of the Soviet 
Bepublic," had plenty of time to receive an un- 
known mechanic who was bringing a resolution 
from a quite negligible factory! . . . Let the ad- 
mirers of Bolshevism shed tears of tenderness 
at this democratic " trait' ' in the President of the 
Council of People's Commissars! For my part, 
I admire the surpassing art of the demagogue. 
That was just the way to become popular in a 
country where the lower classes had been treated 
like cattle for centuries and centuries. 16 

Well, I saw this laborer just after he had come 
back from his interview with Lenin. He was 
quite beside himself and hardly to be taken for 
the same man. Ordinarily calm and discreet, he 
was now talking like an energumen. "There's a 
man for you ! " he kept saying over and over again. 
"There's the man I'm willing to risk my skin 
for! . . . Now there's going to be something 
really doing. . . . Ah, if only we had had a Czar 
like that! . . . Then what would have been the 
use of the Bevolution?" 

This last sentence was so striking it clung 
indelibly in my memory. I have given it word 
for word. The poor man, like M. Jourdain, was 
talking Shakespeare without knowing it: "Caesar 
is dead, let his murderer be Caesar!" 

"But what did he say to you?" I asked him 

16 1 have been told that Lenin often went with his wife to 
public balls given by the Bolshevists and attended by ser- 
vants, sailors and cab drivers; and talked politics there like 
Haroun-al-Raschid, but without any incognito. 



86 LENIN 

later on, when he had calmed down a bit. I re- 
ceived only a vague answer. * ' Everything belongs 
to you people," — or something of the sort, Lenin 
must have said to him. "Everything belongs to 
you people! Take it all! The world is for the 
proletariat. Don't listen to anybody but us. . . . 
The workers have no other friends. We alone are 
the ones to look after the people who work for a 
living.' 9 

The old laborer must have heard those mean- 
ingless phrases, that promise of heaven on earth 
replacing his long life of poverty, at least a hun- 
dred times. Was it the contagion of real faith 
that seemed to give them new meaning in his eyes ? 
Was it the magnetic influence of an overwhelming 
personality? 17 • 

My second example is of a very different na- 
ture. A young man some twenty years of age, of 
an excellent and wealthy family, very intelligent 

17 1 must add here what the results of Lenin's interview 
with the workers' envoy were for this particular factory. It 
must be a fairly typical case. It goes without saying that 
the Menshevists and Revolutionary-Socialists in the factory 
immediately became members of the Bolshevist Party. A 
few days later there was a violent demonstration against the 
superintendent who was a very honorable man with liberal 
convictions. Then the workers followed Lenin's advice lit- 
erally and "took everything," at the same time letting the 
company pay their wages. They began to sell the machinery 
and raw materials to junk dealers. In January, 1918, the 
factory shut down for good. The peasant-laborers went off 
to the country. As the war was over, they were no longer 
afraid of conscription; and could they foresee civil war? 
The skilled laborers entered the pay of the State (if the 
term can be applied to Bolshevist Russia), either as employees 
on the payrolls without jobs, or (a small minority) as Red 
Guards^ 



THE PERSONALITY OF LENIN 87 

and well educated, a complex and delicate nature, 
a talented poet, a student at the Polytechnique 
School and for the time being at the School of 
Artillery, found himself by chance the night after 
the Bolshevist coup d'etat in the hall of the Smolny 
Institute. On that night of triumph all the 
Bolshevist leaders were making inflammatory 
speeches to the excited, undisciplined soldiers 
gathered there. While neither Trotsky nor the 
others made any impression on the young man, 
Lenin, on the contrary, who was greeted with a 
magnificent ovation, quite upset him. 

"It was not a political speech," he told me. "It 
was a cry from the very soul of a man who had 
been waiting for that moment for thirty years. 
I thought I was listening to the voice of Girolamo 
Savonarola." This young man, moreover, was 
not a Bolshevist and did not become converted. 
He was the unfortunate Leonid Kannaguisser 18 
who a year later shot and killed the Bolshevist 
Uritsky, the executioner of the Commune of Petro- 
grad. 

Savonarola? Yes, perhaps! Lenin has some 
of the characteristics of Savonarola; but more, 
probably, of those fanatics one meets so frequent- 
ly in the history of religious sects in Russia. From 
a moral and intellectual point of view this man 
takes after Savonarola and after Tartuffe. He 

18 This unfortunate young man, whose brilliant talents 
and noble character gave so much promise for the future, 
was shot by the Bolshevists. Dark rumors went through the 
capital that he had been subjected to torture four times. 



88 LENIN 

has a nature at once complex and arid; for spir- 
itual involution does not mean spiritual richness, 
necessarily. Lenin is a madman with the luna- 
tic's cunning; a sort of scholar, and at the same 
time a visionary in a small way ; a man who knows 
the masses without knowing anything of men. He 
is a complex primitive type, a combination of sim- 
ple traits : elementary fanaticism, elementary cun- 
ning, elementary intelligence, elementary mad- 
ness. This is perhaps the reason for his strength ; 
for what is more elementary than the half-edu- 
cated unfortunates who make up the mass of 
Eussian workers'? 

A socialist writer told me of his disappointment 
the first time he heard the Bolshevist leader speak. 
Lenin's eloquence seems to impress young poets 
and old workingmen much more deeply than it does 
men of scientific mind. "I expected a sociological 
analysis of the crisis pending ; I heard nothing but 
shouts of fury and cries of hate: ' Arrest the cap- 
italists!' * Hustle them to jail!' I could hardly 
believe my eyes and ears. Was this maniac really 
Lenin, the famous Lenin V 9 

" And how did the audience take it all?" I asked 
him. 

"They gave him a tremendous ovation," he 
answered, shrugging his shoulders. "Quod erat 
demonstrandum! What else could you expect? 
All his catch-words have a terrible directness and 
simplicity. 'Down with war!' ' Arrest the cap- 
italists!' ' Workingmen of Eussia, take every- 



THE PERSONALITY OF LENIN 89 



thing you can find!' But it was with their help, 
just the same, that he gained control of Russia ! ' ' 

"Timeo homines unius libri," said Thomas 
Aquinas. But "men of one newspaper" are much 
more dangerous than "men of one book," es- 
pecially if that paper is called the Pravda. The 
simplicity of the Bolshevist formulae is Lenin's 
first source of strength. I have already mentioned 
the second, which is the misanthropic character 
of his policies. The third is the faith he has in 
those policies and in himself: an emigre, living 
in poverty and leading a mere handful of refugees, 
he ever nourished the hope of conquering Russia, 
Europe, the whole world! 

Ernest Renan, in Don Luigi Tosti, speaks of 
1 ' that contempt for the mob, that combined feeling 
of revolt and impotence, that something — strong, 
harsh and stoical — which is the distinctive char- 
acteristic of brave Italian souls." Lenin has all 
of that. He has been credited with that dreamy 
temperament, which according to the stock crit- 
icism of foreigners, is essentially distinctive of 
the Slav. I am not very fond of generalizations 
on the traits of nationality or race, so very often 
are they mere banalities, and often false banal- 
ities at that. Lenin, I will nevertheless venture, 
is very Russian; and yet in many respects he is 
the opposite of the Slav, in the sense in which 
that word is commonly used by specialists in 
national psychology. Slavs are said to be weak; 
Lenin has a will of iron. Slavs are said to be 



90 LENIN 

romantic; Lenin has not a single trace of emo- 
tionalism. Slavs are said to have a passion for 
metaphysics; no one could be less interested in 
abstractions than Lenin. His dream, if dream he 
has, is the acme of the commonplace; a string of 
barracks ruled by Bolshevists, that, more or less, 
is his ideal. 

And what is the objective of his political pol- 
icies? Great social experiments, first of all; for 
this man is an experimentalist gone mad. With 
all his faith in himself and his ideas, can he really 
believe seriously in the immediate and permanent 
success of his wonderful experiment at the Krem- 
lin (or shall I say Bicetre) ? That is doubtful, at 
least. A few months ago he told Maxim Gorky 
(I got this from a French friend, who, in turn, 
heard it from Gorky's own lips), that "the most 
astonishing thing in this whole business is that no 
one has yet put us out." 

But is not a negative result of this experiment 
in anima vili worth something? A great lesson 
in Communism will come out of it in any case. 
That, it would seem, is the opinion of all the Com- 
munists of the Kremlin. "If we fail," said one 
of the most famous Bolshevists, "we will put off 
our work until later on, that's all. The social 
revolution will take place some other time." It 
is all so very simple, when you think of it ! The 
destruction of a State, the ruin of a people, a few 
million dead, does all that matter, is that of the 



THE PERSONALITY OF LENIN 91 

slightest importance, in the eyes of men who have 
such lofty aims? 

And the final result of Lenin's policies? The 
lasting hatred of the Eussian masses for every- 
thing socialistic! 

"I see in the events of our time a real triumph 
of the defeated and humiliated bourgeoisie; its 
conquerors are more bourgois than the bourgeoisie 
itself. 

"Lenin is right; the life which was upset by 
the Communist Revolution will bring to the Rus- 
sian village the 'gospel of a new truth.' Except 
that this gospel, with a few possible modifications, 
may well prove to be nothing but our old Civil 
Code. The law will recognize the 'accomplished 
fact,' close its eyes to many things, and register 
as 'bought' what in reality was 'stolen.' 

"The bayonet has created a new upper class 
in Russia, a plutocracy of recent date, capitalists 
in khaki, profiteers in the red cap. I saw men 
dancing at their parties, their tanzouTki, in the 
palaces of the Raiewskys and of the Pobedonost- 
sevs. The aristocrats of today do not dance so 
well as those of yesterday, but they know much 
better how to defend their rights. 

"To amateurs in historic teleology, I must offer 
an answer to the question: 'Why Lenin?' The 
Destiny that rules us appointed Lenin to fix eter- 
nally the triumph of private property! Such a 
role for the Bolshevist pope is probably the cruel- 



92 LENIN 

est jest History ever played on one of its favored 
darlings. 

"Protopopov 19 ever seemed grimly bent on 
compromising the reaction and hastening the out- 
break of revolution. Lenin is doing just the op- 
posite : he is compromising the revolution and pre- 
paring the ground for reaction. As between these 
two autocrats, you may take your choice. 

"Our revolution resembles our war as a daugh- 
ter resembles her mother. Lenin is the legal heir 
of the grand-duke Nicholas Nicolaievich. The of- 
fensive Lenin is carrying on against capitalism is 
in every respect like the campaign of Nicholas in 
the Carpathians, save that after his retreat, where 
will 'the positions prepared in advance' be? 

"There is a beautiful statue by Turgan in the 
Luxembourg Museum, called The Paralytic Led 
by the Blindman. Russia led to destruction by 
this deadly man might well adorn her armories 
with copies of that statue." 20 

19 A Russian minister who was very unpopular during the 
latter part of the old regime. 

20 Landau-Aldanov, Armageddon, Petrograd, 1918. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE THEORIES OF THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION: 
MARX, BAKUNIN AND SOREL 

I T is a very curious fact and one perhaps with- 
■*■ out precedent except in the history of Chris- 
tian doctrine, that almost all the elements 
involved in the desperate social struggle now 
raging over the four corners of Europe, go back 
to a single man : Karl Marx. In Germany, Schei- 
demann and Hasse, Noske and Liebknecht, David 
and Ledebur, Ebert and Rosa Luxemburg ; and in 
Russia, Lenin and Plekhanov, Trotsky and Pot- 
resov, Martov and Tsereteli, Kamenev and Dan! 

Even the theorists of the bourgeoisie, to show 
the impossibility of a communist regime in Rus- 
sia, have not failed to appeal to the writings of 
the author of Das Kapital. 

On the purely theoretical side of the question, 
this has long been the case. Twenty years ago, in the 
famous controversy between Kautsky and Bern- 
stein, both contenders appealed (more or less suc- 
cessfully!) to the works of Marx; much as theolog- 
ical contenders of old brought out the Bible to prove 
(successfully) the positive and negative of every 
proposition. But twenty years ago, the lusty give- 

93 



94 LENIN 

and-take was carried on in the Neue Zeit, in the 
Sozialistische Monatshafte, on the floors of so- 
cialist conventions. Now the belligerents have 
"stepped out side' 9 into the streets of Berlin, of 
Munich, of Dresden; and syllogisms use machine 
guns and bayonets in their major premises. 

Who is right? What in fact, would be the atti- 
tude of Marx and Engels if they were still alive 
today? Is Bolshevism the necessary outcome of 
Marxism; or is it rather the negation and the 
opposite of Marxism? 

Bolshevism is, we can all agree, not literal 
Marxism; but it seems to be the logical corollary 
of certain ideas which Marx held as a young man, 
combined with elements borrowed from anarchism 
and syndicalism. Eosa Luxemburg said once that 
the Marxist theory was the child of bourgeois 
science; and that the birth of this child had cost 
the life of its mother. It could be said more cor- 
rectly that Bolshevism is the illegitimate child of 
Marxism and anarchism, that it has caused both 
its parents great sorrow, and will continue to 
do so. 

Karl Marx's affirmations were clear and pos- 
itive, so long as he was dealing with the past and 
present of the capitalist system. But he became 
more vague and less cocksure as the question of 
the future came up. Perhaps Marx thought he 
knew how the capitalist world would end. But 
the event proves he was mistaken. The failure of 
this extraordinary mind shows once more the 



THEORIES OF THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION 95 

folly of historical prophecies. That he did fail 
as a prophet is quite obvious today. 

In saying all this, I am not thinking of those 
statistical arguments (relating to division of 
wealth in the period from 1850 to 1900) which 
were brought up long ago by Edward Bernstein 
and his school. Suffice it to compare the excellent 
analysis of economic facts which we find in the 
first volume of Das Kapital with the political 
prophecies of Marx, which were nearly always 
false, to understand what danger there is in def- 
inite prophecy even for minds as powerful as his. 

We read in the Communist Manifesto of 1847 : 
i i The bourgeois revolution can be only the imme- 
diate prelude to the proletarian revolution. ' ' 

Two years later Marx tried to prove to Lassalle 
that the proletarian revolution would break out 
the next year at the latest. In 1850 he was preach- 
ing the idea of a revolution that would continue 
agitation "till the day when the power of the 
State shall be taken over by the proletariat, and 
when the forces of production (or at least the 
main ones) shall be concentrated in the hands of 
the proletariat.' ' 

In 1862 Marx wrote to Kugelman: "It is evi- 
dent that we are on the verge of a revolution. I 
have never doubted that, since 1850.' * 

In 1872, in a letter to Sorge, he maintained that 
"the conflagration was starting all over Eur ope.' ' 

As for Engels, he said, some thirty years ago: 
"The government of the Czar will not be able 



96 LENIN 

to survive this current year; and if they start 
something in Russia, good day and good night !" 

Which provokes the comment that faith is faith, 
even when it calls itself science ! 

I will not stress the prophecies of Marx and 
Engels with reference to foreign affairs. It is 
sufficient to recall that Marx considered Bismarck 
"a mere tool of the cabinet of St. Petersburg ;" 
and that Engels said, in one of his letters to Sorge : 
"If war breaks out one can say with absolute 
certainty that after a few battles Eussia will come 
to an understanding with Prussia at the expense 
of Austria and France. " 

But has not the very foundation of "scientific" 
socialism, the famous "catastrophic collapse of 
capitalism," been reduced to nothing by the ex- 
periences of these last five years'? In the begin- 
ning of 1918, I wrote in Armageddon: 

"The authors of scientific socialism did not de- 
scribe the form which the social revolution would 
take, nor the length of time necessary for it to 
gain the upper hand over the master class. Engels 
maintained that the debacle of the capitalist 
regime would be preceded by a great war, and 
Karl Kautsky expressed a similar opinion. 

"Que may therefore suppose that in July, 1914, 
the over-production of commodities predicted by 
Marx began, which brought on the war and eo 
ipso determined . the "catastrophic moment" of 
the social revolution. It can be easily seen, how- 
ever, that in the course of the last four years of 



THEORIES OF THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION 97 

European history the laws immanent in the cap- 
italist system have ceased to be so immanent, and 
tendencies have developed which work in exactly 
the opposite direction: instead of a socialization 
of wealth, which the Marxians predicted, the 
war brought on an unprecedented destruction of 
wealth. When the long-awaited day for the 
" expropriation of the expropriators'' came, it was 
discovered, unfortunately, that in spite of the 
great number of " capitalists" there was nothing 
left to expropriate. The world, which is now be- 
ing rebuilt on a new principle, receives, as its 
main heritage, devastated countries, sunken ships, 
burned powder, exploded shells, the obligation of 
feeding millions of invalids and orphans, and a 
few hundred billions of national debts which will 
never be paid. 

"As for Eussia, her only implement of produc- 
tion today is the bayonet. In reality the Jacquerie 
of Pougatchev in the 18th century presented al- 
most as many possibilities of socialism as our own 
Apocalyptic days. 

"It is evident that henceforth socialism will be- 
come more and more a problem of the develop- 
ment of the forces of production. But as there is 
always, in socialism itself, a problem of redis- 
tribution, terrible conflicts will probably take place 
in the future, especially with reference to the 
colonial question. ' ' 

More than a year after writing these lines I had 



98 LENIN 

the satisfaction of finding some of the ideas I had 
expressed in them in an article by Karl Kautsky. 

This — I quote from an Italian reviewer — is 
what the eminent theorist of Marxism says : 

* ' The economic basis from which socialism was 
to rise was the great wealth created by capitalism 
making possible the inauguration of a regime of 
material welfare for everybody. This wealth has 
been almost entirely destroyed by five years of 
war; and hence the economic basis of socialism 
has all but vanished. 

"Part of the proletariat has deduced from its 
acquisition of political power that it is entitled to 
material welfare immediately, which, of course, 
is impossible under present economic conditions. 
The other part is tired of these exaggerations and 
feels the impossibility of realizing them. Having 
lost all judgment on economic matters, our work- 
ingmen have no thought-out programme; and 
therefore remain undecided, instead of energet- 
ically opening the way for radical reforms now 
more necessary than ever before because of the 
universal misery. 

"Another and a worse heritage which the war 
has left the revolution is the cult of violence. This 
long war has inclined the proletariat to ignore 
economic laws and given it faith in the strong arm. 
The 'spirit of Spartacus' is, at bottom, the spirit 
of Ludendorf ; and just as Ludendorf has not only 
ruined Germany but at the same time strength- 
ened militarism in the enemy countries, in France 



THEORIES OF THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION 99 

especially, Spartacus is likewise leading his own 
cause to ruin and encouraging a policy of violence 
in the majority. Noske is the natural counter- 
poise of Spartacus." 

Now it would be difficult to see in the assertions 
of Kautsky anything but a confession of the fail- 
ure of the prophecies of scientific socialism, a 
confession which is even more remarkable for 
its honesty in that it is made by the foremost 
theorist of that doctrine. And if it be true, as 
the anti-socialist press maintains, that Karl 
Kautsky has abandoned some of the Marxian po- 
sitions which seemed to be almost impregnable, 
that would appear to be due to the surprises the 
Great War has brought him. 

Does this mean that the socialists did not fore- 
see the war? Such an assertion would be alto- 
gether unwarranted. It is true that many social- 
ists have been responsible for one terrible mis- 
understanding. In the famous phrase of the 
Communist Manifesto, "the proletariat has no 
country," they saw the indicative instead of the 
imperative (did Marx himself see the imperative 
save at a few scattered moments of Messianic 
exaltation'?). To such the World War must have 
brought a bitter disappointment ; it happened that 
the proletarians did have their countries, good or 
bad as the result may have been; it happened, 
also, whether for better or worse, that the Ger- 
man workingmen, instead of hurling themselves 
upon the German capitalists, rushed against the 



100 LENIN 

French workingmen and the French capitalists. 
But it would be absolutely unjust to say that the 
socialists did not foresee the war. They inces- 
santly warned against this terrible danger threat- 
ening the world — in their press, and in their in- 
ternational congresses (in Brussels in 1891, in 
Zurich in 1893, in Stuttgart in 1907, and in Basle 
in 1912). But what the socialists, and especially 
the Marxians, did not really foresee was the great 
effect a world war would necessarily have on their 
doctrine and destinies. 

With the war, chaos began, a chaos in doctrine 
and a chaos in practice. And chaos reigns today 
more widely than ever. It is not so long ago that 
Haase, Scheidemann, and Liebknecht were friends 
and comrades, members of the "greatest and most 
efficiently organized party in the world," which 
polled four million votes at elections and had a 
theoretical common ground which was as intellec- 
tually brilliant as it was logically unassailable. 
Alas, from this common ground they have today 
drawn conclusions which lead them to shoot and 
kill one another. The " Marxian" press accuses 
the "Marxian" Scheidemann of having sent assas- 
sins to murder the "Marxian" Kurt Eisner! The 
"Marxian" Haase calls the "Marxian" Noske an 
executioner. The "Marxian" Hoffman has the 
"Marxian" Levin and Landauer shot. And all 
in the name of Marx ! What a disgrace and what 
a debacle! 

This debacle Lenin seems to have foreseen. 



THEORIES OF THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION 101 

"What we are suffering from today in the realm 
of ideas," he wrote in 1908 in an article against 
the revisionists, "that is to say, our polemics 
against the theoretical correctives which are being 
applied to the doctrine of Marx, . . . the work- 
ing class will necessarily have to suffer on an in- 
finitely larger scale when the proletarian revolu- 
tion brings all these questions under discussion to 
a crisis, brings all differences of opinion to bear 
on points of the most immediate importance in 
determining the conduct of the masses, and forces 
them in the full midst of battle to distinguish be- 
tween friends and enemies and to discard poor 
allies in order the better to deal a decisive blow 
at the common adversary. ' n 

It is true that a remarkable change in the sit- 
uation took place which Lenin could not foresee. 
Former revisionists are found today among the 
independents, and former orthodox socialists 
among the Bolshevists! 

The lesson that is forcibly taught by all this 
ichaos is that fate seems thus to take vengeance 
on those who think they know the whole truth. 
"Scientific" socialism has the glory of giving 
social science a new method of investigation ; but 
its error was in making a philosopher's stone out 
of the method of Marx. This stone was less a 
gold-maker than a gold brick. 

Karl Marx, the great Utopian of scientific so- 

1 N. Lenin, Marxisme et Revisionisme, A la memoire de 
Karl Marx (a collection of pamphlets), 2d edition, published 
by the Soviets of Petrograd, 1919, p. 11. 



102 LENIN 

cialism, preached the advent of a new Messiah — 
the proletariat. Human experience is passing 
judgment on him today. It gives a flagrant lie to 
this "expectation" of an "economic savior" in 
the person of the proletariat, just as it confounds 
the hope in a moral Messiah, in the person of that 
same proletariat. All Marxians thought they saw 
"the refuge of all civilization, all intelligence, and 
all truth" in the working class. Not so, Marx 
himself, indeed. He had little confidence in hu- 
man nature. But among the Bolshevists today, 
and especially among the German Spartacides and 
the French and Italian extremists, the best minds 
are infected with a moral, though not a sociolog- 
ical, Messianism. Eealities are gradually taking 
vengeance on them. Experience is showing that 
the proletariat is very decidedly inferior to the 
bourgeoisie from the intellectual point of view. 
From the moral point of view it is at best equal 
but in no sense superior. The proletariat is more 
industrious, less selfish (it owns less to be selfish 
about), and more disposed to take risks (it has 
less to lose), than the bourgeoisie. It has, on the 
other hand, moral defects which come from its 
very low intellectual level. Under these condi- 
tions it can be said with great probability that 
the hope of a Messiah in the proletariat will bring 
Western Marxians the same cruel disillusionment 
that it has already brought the most sincere and 
intelligent Marxians in Eussia. No, the moral 
and intellectual presuppositions of the socialist 



THEORIES OF THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION 103 

regime are still far from being confirmed. We 
have the sad right today to be more pessimistic 
than Schiller was in 1793. 



We know that Michael Bakunin furnished 
Turgienev, who knew him very well, with the 
prototype of his character, Roudin — a man devoid 
of will-power, a useless individual (though a good 
talker), incapable of doing anything serious in 
this world. This detail is very interesting when 
one thinks that before the rise of Lenin, Bakunin 
was the only Russian who ever played a very 
great role in the revolutionary history of Europe ; 
and the results of his activity and thinking can 
still be felt today, a full half century after his 
death. 

Bakunin was neither a philosopher nor a the- 
orist. He undoubtedly had the gifts of a writer ; 
but he wrote very little and then quite against his 
own inclinations. His writings, always vital and 
interesting in spite of their many faults, tend to 
be discursive, digressive. Most of them were left 
unfinished; others were published only after the 
author's death. He frequently changed his mind 
in the middle of a pamphlet, to the no little con- 
fusion of the reader. In the matter of style, 
Bakunin is the exact opposite of Karl Marx, his 
eternal antagonist, whose writings, from their log- 
ical form, are like mathematical theorems. 

Lenin has not the broad rich nature of Bakunin, 



104 LENIN 

to whom lie is very inferior in native endowments. 
Lenin would be mortified to have anything at all 
in common with the great anarchist. Still the re- 
semblance between these men is striking : many of 
Lenin's favorite thoughts derive from Bakunin — 
whether directly or indirectly does not concern 
us here. 

The main idea underlying the political policies 
of Lenin (from the end of 1917 on) is the denial 
of the principle of universal suffrage. The Con- 
stituent Assembly is, in his eyes, "the dictator- 
ship of the bourgeoisie." 2 

This happens to be Bakunin 's favorite postu- 
late: " Universal suffrage, " he says, "so long as 
it is exercised in a society where the people, the 
mass of the workers, are economically subject to 
a minority, can produce only fake elections, anti- 
democratic in essence, and absolutely opposed to 
the needs, instincts, and real will of the people." 3 

This, in turn, is a repetition of the famous dic- 
tum of Proudhon in his Idees revolutionnaires : 
"Universal suffrage is another name for counter- 
revolution." I may add that Bakunin considered 
this one of the cardinal differences between his 
own views and those of Marx. "The Marxians," 
he said, "good Germans that they are, naturally 
worship the power of the State, and they are also 
necessarily prophets of political and social disci- 

2 Lenin, Report to the First Congress of the Communist 
International, July 31, 1919. 

3 Michael Bakunin, "L'EmpireKnouto-germanique" (1871), 
in his (Euvres, Vol. II, p. 311. 



THEORIES OF THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION 105 

pline, champions of government 'from the top 
down' — always in the name of universal suffrage 
and the sovereignty of the masses, who have the 
privilege and the honor of electing their masters — ■ 
and of obeying them." 4 

Lenin, however, goes much further than Baku- 
nin. The latter rejected universal suffrage only 
so long as "inequality of economic and social con- 
ditions continues to prevail in the organization 
of society." Now the inequality, as everybody 
knows, has been suppressed in Russia through the 
generous efforts of the Bolshevists; but there 
has been no talk of re-establishing universal suf- 
frage ! Lenin finds the Soviet system much safer. 
And he is right ! 

The same is true in the matter of the "bill of 
rights." "In no capitalist country," says Lenin, 
"does 'general democracy' exist. Even in the 
most democratic bourgeois republic 'free speech 
and free assembly' are meaningless phrases," 
etc. 5 And here is what Bakunin says: "In the 
freest, most democratic, countries like England, 
Belgium, Switzerland, and the United States, the 
freedom, the political 'rights,' which the masses 
are supposed to enjoy, are nothing but a fiction." 6 

Furthermore Bakunin is but expressing one of 
Lenin's favorite exaggerations when he says that 

4 Bakunin, "Lettre au journal La Liberie, de Bruxelles" 
(1872), in his CEuvres, Vol. II, p. 345. 

5 Lenin, I.e.; Humanite, July 29-30, 1919. 

6 Bakunin, "Le manuscrit redige a Marseille" (1870), in 
(Euvres, Vol. IV., p. 190. 



106 LENIN 

to enter the International one must " agree that 
the wealthy, exploiting, governing classes will 
never voluntarily, whether through generosity or 
a sense of justice, make any concession to the 
proletariat, however urgent, however insignifi- 
cant, that concession appear; because to do so 
would be contrary to nature in general and to 
bourgeois nature in particular . . . which means 
that the workers will be able to attain their eman- 
cipation and gain their rights as human beings 
only after a great struggle, waged by the organ- 
ized workers of the whole world against the cap- 
italists and exploiting land-owners of the whole 
world." 7 

But most important is the fact that Bakunin 
and Lenin have the very same conception of the 
conditions which make a revolution possible. 

Bakunin was always firmly convinced that a rev- 
olution could be started anywhere and at any 
time. 

"Just suppose," he wrote in 1872 to his Italian 
friends, "a shout were raised in all the villages 
of Italy: 'War upon the castles! Peace for the 
cottage dwellers ! ' as was actually the cry during 
the revolt of the German peasants in 1520; or 
perhaps this slogan, which is even more expres- 
sive: 'The land for those who work it!' Do you 
think that many peasants in Italy would sit tight? 
Burn at the same time as many registries of deeds 

7 The italics are Bakunin's; see his "Fragmenf (1872), in 
his CEuvres, Vol. IV., p. 423. 



THEORIES OF THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION 107 

as possible, and the social revolution would be 
a fact!" 

This dream of a social revolution led by the 
rural poor always haunted Bakunin's imagina- 
tion. He reverts to it in several of his works. 
That point also Bakunin regarded as a fundamen- 
tal difference between himself and Marx. Accord- 
ing to Bakunin, "all nations, whether civilized or 
uncivilized," could free themselves at one stroke 
and go directly over to communism without fol- 
lowing the outline laid down by Marx of a " stin- 
gily measured emancipation of the working classes 
not to be realized in full for a very, very long 
time." 

On the important question of preservation or 
destruction of the State, the ideas of the anar- 
chistic Bakunin are, of course, absolutely definite : 

"Say 'State,' and you say violence, oppression, 
exploitation, and injustice, all erected into a sys- 
tem and made fundamental conditions for the very 
existence of society." 8 

"Say 'International Association of Workers,' 
and you deny the existence of the State. ' ,9 

1 ' The means and the prerequisite, if not the prin- 
cipal objective, of the revolution, is the annihila- 
tion of the principle of authority in all of its pos- 
• sible manifestations ; and this means the complete 
abolition of the political, the juridical State." 10 

8 Bakunin, "Letters to a Frenchman" (1870), in CEJuvres, 
Vol. IV., p. 54. 9 Ibid., p. 45. 

10 Bakunin, "L 'Empire Knouto-germanique" (1871), m 
(Euvres, Vol. II., p. 344. 



108 LENIN 

Lenin's ideas on this question are vague and 
contradictory. We nevertheless find in the same 
report, presented to the Congress of the Third 
International, a paragraph (§ XX) which reads: 

"The suppression of the State's power is the 
aim of all socialists, and first among them, of 
Marx himself. 11 Without the realization of this 
aim, real democracy — which means equality and 
freedom — cannot be realized. Now, this aim can 
he attained in practice only through the democ- 
racy of the Soviets, the proletarian democracy, 
that is ; for in calling the labor organizations into 
direct and constant participation in the adminis- 
tration of the State, we immediately prepare for 
the total suppression of the latter." 

However, in other paragraphs of this pamphlet, 
it is no longer a question of suppressing the State, 
but rather of re-enforcing it by bringing the mass- 
es into closer touch with its administration. 

There is perfect agreement, nevertheless, be- 
tween the ideas of Lenin and Bakunin with ref- 
erence to administrative apparatus. Bakunin 
thought that in 1870 (Paris Commune) the great 
crime of the "pedantic lawyers and scholars who 
made up the Government of National Defense 
was not to have completely broken up, while they 
were about it, the administrative apparatus of 
armed France. . . . " 

11 Need we point out that this appeal to the authority of 
Marx is very risky? Bakunin considered his illustrious an- 
tagonist a "worshipper of the power of the State!" 



THEORIES OF THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION 109 

Lenin prides himself on having smashed this 
apparatus in Enssia to smithereens. "The Soviet 
organization of the State/' he says, "is alone 
capable of overthrowing once and for all the old 
bourgeois bureaucracy which was, and had fatally 
to be, preserved nnder the capitalist regime, even 
in the most democratic republics ; and which was 
indeed the greatest obstacle in the way of real 
democracy for industrial laborer and peasant. 
The Commune of Paris took the first step of his- 
torical importance in this direction, and the Rus- 
sian Soviets have taken the second.' ' 

Some of the practical ideas which have made 
Lenin famous are mere plagiarisms of Bakunin 's 
schemes. The device of sending expeditions of 
industrial workers and Red Guards out to the 
rural districts is nothing but that. 

It would be wrong, however, to maintain that 
Lenin and Bakunin had the same notion of the 
general character of the Revolution. These two 
leaders are very different sorts of men and their 
outlooks cannot of course be identical. 

Bakunin thought the Revolution could do every- 
thing, even defeat a foreign enemy. In this he 
was a loyal descendant of the Jacobins of 1793. 
His faith in the necessity for revolution in France 
was probably never stronger than after Sedan. 
He was convinced that the social revolution of the 
French peasants led by the Corps-francs would 
be able to destroy the army of Moltke and thwart 



110 LENIN 

the imperialistic designs of Bismarck. All his 
writings of this period show this same unshakable 
faith. 12 

We know that Lenin was not such a fire-eater. 
His policies are inspired not by the memory of 
Valmy and Jemappes but by that of Kalnsz and 
Tarnopol. He has no faith whatsoever in the 
military capacities of the Kevolution. Bakunin, 
in 1871, wanted to convert the whole country into 
"one vast graveyard to bury the Prussians in." 
He preached "war to the death, a barbaric war, 
war with knife, tooth and nail, if necessary." 13 
Lenin preferred to conclude the Peace of Brest- 
Litovsk. And today rumor has it that in the 
secret conferences at the Kremlin he is always the 
one to favor conciliation and amicable compromise 
with the Entente. Lenin knows that war was too 
much for the Czar and for Kerensky ; he realizes 
it may be too much for him as well. He asks for 
peace accordingly, thereby showing himself once 
more a better strategist than Trotsky and his 
other associates. 

On the other hand he is much more energetic 
than Bakunin in dealing with the defenseless. He 
preaches and prescribes the most bloody terror. 
Bakunin suffered infinitely more from reaction 
than did Lenin. He was twice condemned to death 
and spent many years of his life in the fortress of 
Olmiitz, where he was chained to the wall ; and in 

i 2 (Euvres, Vol. IV., p. 247 
is Ibid., Vol. II., p. 293. 



THEORIES OF THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION 111 

the terrible fortresses of Peter-and-Paul and of 
Schlusselburg, where he lost all his teeth from 
scurvy. Never, however, did he preach terrorism. 
Cruelty was repugnant to his generous spirit. 

But, again unlike Lenin, Bakunin had neither 
personal ambition nor thirst for power. His works 
accordingly do not originate the idea of a dic- 
tatorship of the proletariat, though the social 
foundation on which he rested his socialist revolu- 
tion, in theory, is exactly the same as that which 
Lenin is using today. While Lenin would never 
acknowledge this, Bakunin has expressed the sit- 
uation in the baldest terms : 

"By 'flower of the proletariat' I mean that 
great mass, those millions of non-civilized, illit- 
erate, disinherited, poverty- stricken people whom 
Engels and Marx preferred to subject to the 
paternal regime of a very strong government" 1 * 
— for their own good, of course, since, as every- 
one knows, all governments govern in the inter- 
ests of the masses! "By ' flower of the prole- 
tariat' I mean that great popular rabble, that 
canaille, which, being practically free from all 
taint of bourgeois civilization, carries within it- 
self — in its passions, its instincts, its aspirations, 
in all the needs and sufferings of its general po- 
sition in society — the germs of the socialism of 
the future. This canaille, taken by itself alone, 
is strong enough this very minute to start the 

14 "These are the literal words used by Engels in a very 
instructive letter written to our friend Caffiero." (Bakunin.) 



112 LENIN 

Social Bevolution and carry it to triumphant 
victory. ' ,15 



M. Georges Sorel, in my opinion, has been 
thought of too much as the theorist of the prole- 
tarian revolt through the general strike. That is 
perhaps his own fault, for he has too often iden- 
tified his work with that mediocre notion, which 
the post-war revolutions in Bussia, Germany, Aus- 
tria, and Hungary have most decidedly refuted. 
M. Sorel is nevertheless the spiritual father of 
syndicalism. He, alone among all socialists per- 
haps, is the philosopher, the psychologist, and 
even the poet, of "creative violence." Karl Marx 
was only a sociologist and as such was without 
doubt infinitely superior to Sorel; but it prob- 
ably would never have occurred to him to take 
the psychological theory of violence seriously. In 
this, more than anything else, we find the spiritual 
kinship between Sorel and Lenin. 

The theorist and present leader of Bolshevism 
borrowed from Karl Marx (misrepresenting him 
often, though not in my opinion, as a general rule) 
the theory of the class struggle ; the notion of the 
"proletariat-Messiah" ("scientific" socialism); 
the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat ; and 
that of the "catastrophic collapse" of capitalism. 
From Bakunin he took his faith in the possibility 
of the communist revolution no matter how, no 

15 Bakunin, "Fragment" in (Euvres, Vol. IV., p. 414. 



THEORIES OF THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION 113 

matter when, no matter where; and this faith he 
managed — Heaven knows how — to reconcile with 
his Marxism. Finally he fonnd in Sorel, who is 
not one of his favorites meanwhile, a deep convic- 
tion of the necessity and of the holiness of vio- 
lence. 

I will not give in detail the theory of the pro- 
letarian strike which is to Sorel the theory of the 
Social Eevolution itself. I think everyone is 
sufficiently familiar with that famous theory. I 
will simply quote a few fragments from his hymn 
to " creative violence,' ' which is particularly time- 
ly today in the light of our experience with the 
Great "War and with the Bolshevist revolution. 

"Not only can the violence of the proletariat 
make sure of the revolution of the future, but it 
seems also to be the only means within reach of 
the nations of Europe, enervated as they are by 
humanitarian mollycoddleism, to regain their for- 
mer virility. Violence forces capitalism to con- 
cern itself solely with its material role in life ; and 
tends to give it back the aggressive assertiveness 
it formerly possessed. A growing and solidly or- 
ganized working-class can force the capitalist to 
remain passionate in the industrial struggle: if, 
in the face of a rich bourgeoisie greedy for con- 
quest, a united and revolutionary proletariat 
should arise, capitalistic society would attain 
its historical perfection. . . . The danger which 
threatens the future of the world can be averted 
if the proletariat clings obstinately to its revolu- 



114 LENIN 

tionary ideas, so as to realize as nearly as possible 
the conception of Marx. . . . The violence of the 
proletariat exercised as a pure and simple man- 
ifestation of class feeling, and class struggle, 
appears in this light to be a very beautiful, 
a very heroic thing. . . . Those who teach the 
populace to strive for some superlatively high 
ideal of justice, forward looking toward the 
future, cannot be cursed out too roundly. Such 
people would fix permanently on the State the 
ideas resulting in all the bloody scenes of 1793; 
while the concept of the class struggle tends to 
purify the concept of violence. . . . The idea 
of the general strike, continually revitalized by 
the emotions which proletarian violence provokes, 
fosters an absolutely epic state of mind. . . ." 16 

Sorel is a very personal thinker ; he is also, as 
he says himself, a self-educated man. This com- 
bination was necessary, indeed, to create the 
philosophy of violence and the myth of the general 
strike. Three men, in all his vast readings, seem 
to have had a particular influence on Sorel : Marx, 
Kenan and Bergson — one of the strangest mix- 
tures conceivable: "Capital," "The Prayer on 
the Akropolis," "Time and Freewill" — syndical- 
ism! To this list we might add the names of 
Darwin, Nietzsche, and Hartman. 

This peculiar amalgam of ideas, worked out in 
the intellectual laboratory inside Sorel ? s head, 

16 Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence, pp. 128, 130, 161, 
and 388. 



THEORIES OF THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION 115 

forms a whole which is very original, intensely 
personal, and often interesting. In studying this 
system, today especially, one is inclined to ask 
why Sorel selected the general strike as the one 
supreme manifestation of violence. All his argu- 
ments could be just as well or even better applied 
to military mutiny and civil war. It seems that 
in this matter Sorel was much impressed by the 
failure of the first Russian revolution. But, now, 
after we have seen a number of successful revo- 
lutions, I wonder whether, if Sorel were writing 
his Reflections on Violence over again, he would 
not abandon the idea of the general strike, which 
has failed, and create a new myth of armed civil 
war? I do not mean this as facetious merely. 
The fact is that in reality, the general strike plays 
no necessary part at all in Sorel ? s system. 

It is true that the "normal development of 
strikes" entails "a string of acts of violence" 
which serves to keep up the morale of revolution- 
ary syndicalism. This "string" has a peculiar 
fascination for Sorel, especially when it is a 
question of bourgeois employers who are disposed 
to make their employees happy. 

Certain it is, at any rate, that the Russian 
Revolution has taken place without any pro- 
letarian strike, and has surpassed in its con- 
sequences the wildest of Sorel 's dreams. The 
"string of acts of violence" which follow a revo- 
lution are infinitely more imposing than those 
following on a general strike. And since experi- 



116 LENIN 

ence has shown that civil war is quite possible 
in our time, I do not see what remains of the 
principal raison d'etre of all this strike myth- 
ology. 

What is absolutely incomprehensible is Sorel 's 
understanding of the future. Let us grant that 
the transition from capitalism to socialism is car- 
ried out, once and for all, under "catastrophic" 
conditions which are beyond human foresight. 
But after that? "What use, after the revolution, 
does Sorel think he can make of those brutal 
forces of hatred and violence which have been 
unchained and exalted by the fierce struggle be- 
tween the proletariat and the bourgeoisie? The 
analyst of the Reflections has no answer to give 
to this question. How could he have any? He 
says himself that his sociological tendencies are 
fundamentally pessimistic. We must not there- 
fore expect from him the usual cant about a 
Heaven on earth so soon as hated capitalism has 
been crushed. But since the class struggle, which 
quite entrances Sorel today, will have to dis- 
appear after the fall of capitalism; and as there 
can be no more strikes in a society without classes, 
what on earth will become of Our Lady Violence 
— all dressed up with no place to go ? "What other 
mythology can be improvised to take the place of 
the proletarian strike? But to suppose that vio- 
lence, one of the primitive instincts of man, to be- 
gin with, and which has been pent up, nourished, 
whipped to a frenzy, as the syndicalists would 



THEORIES OF THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION 117 

wish, will suddenly disappear after the mysterious 
" catastrophe' ' of the transition from capitalism to 
socialism is utterly naive from the psychological 
point of view — so naive in fact, that a man of 
Sorel 's ingeniousness would probably suppose no 
such thing. Well, then, what other answer can 
he give to this question? Or does a redeeming 
agnosticism again relieve him of the need of 
answering? 

Since the general strike is nothing but a myth 
to Sorel, I will refrain from analyzing its theory 
as the critics of syndicalism generally do. I will 
simply note that, in the Eussian and German revo- 
lutions, the proletarian strike, like the general 
strike, played hardly any part of consequence, 
for the simple reason that both revolutions were 
brought about by the soldiers and not by the 
workers at all. This was a turn of affairs quite 
unforeseen by Sorel, as it was, moreover, by most 
socialists. 

On the other hand, Sorel guessed very closely 
what the governmental policies of the revolution 
would be. "Experience has always shown that 
our revolutionists will argue from 'reasons of 
State' as soon as they get into power. They will 
then adopt police methods and regard justice as 
a weapon to abuse their enemies with. 17 If by 
chance our parliamentary socialists should gain 
control of the government, they would show them- 
selves to be true successors of the Inquisition, of 

"Ibid., p. 156. 



118 LENIN 

the Old Regime and of Robespierre. . . . Thanks 
to this reform, we might again see the State tri- 
umphant at the hands of hangman and heads- 
man." 18 

I do not know whether Lenin and Trotsky can 
be counted among the "parliamentary socialists" 
for whom Sorel has so little affection; but I do 
know that these gloomy prophecies, the pessimism 
of which might have seemed exaggerated before 
the Bolshevist revolution, have on the contrary 
fallen far short of the truth. The Bolshevists 
have literally re-established the methods of the 
Inquisition, of the Old Regime, of Robespierre — 
save for the political tribunals perhaps. Lenin 
was able to dispense with these by shooting his 
enemies without any trial at all. That, in fact, 
is much simpler! 

Sorel thought, however, that war, the symbol 
of which, according to him, is "proletarian vio- 
lence," was above the mean and criminal methods 
"parliamentary socialists" would use once they 
were in power. "Everything which concerns war 
is done without hatred and without the spirit of 
revenge." 

I am far from questioning the accuracy of the 
•comparison between proletarian violence and 
military carnage; but I may say that Sorel has 
neither seen the wars of the past nor foreseen 
the character of the one we have all just been 

" Ibid., p. 160. 



THEORIES OF THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION 119 

witnessing and of which Bolshevism is the hate- 
ful, as it is the logical, outcome. 

Lenin's governmental policy is absolutely per- 
meated with Sorel's faith in violence and in the 
salutary effects of violence. He agrees with Sorel, 
furthermore, on more than one specific point. The 
question of the State, for instance, is disposed 
of in the Reflections in the following manner: 
"The syndicalists do not propose to reform the 
State, as did the men of the 18th century; they 
intend to destroy it ; because they are determined 
to realize the idea of Marx that the socialist revo- 
lution must not end by replacing one governing 
minority with another." 

Lenin, who claims to be governing in the name 
of the majority of workers and peasants 19 (the 
elections to the Constituent Assembly and to the 
municipalities did not prove anything, you see), 
absolutely agree with this : he considered that his 
task had to be one of continued and systematic 
destruction, for a while at least. "There are 
moments in history," he says, "when it is most 
important for the success of revolution to pile up 
as much debris as possible, to blow up, that is, 
as many old institutions as possible." 20 

He accomplished this task wonderfully. He did 
it so well, indeed, that later on when he decided 
to start "the prosaic job of clearing up the junk" 
he failed completely. Never was power more 

19 N. Lenin, The Problems of the Soviets in Power, p. 4. 

20 Lenin, Ibid., p. 40. 



120 LENIN 

absolute than that of the Bolshevists; and yet 
Bussia has never been a " State.' ' "Such huge 
bodies are too awkward to get to their feet again 
when once they have fallen down. They cannot 
be held up when once they have lost their balance ; 
and their fall is always a very violent fall." 21 

And here is another very Sorelian idea which 
dominates Lenin's mind: "It can be said that a 
great danger threatening syndicalism would be 
any attempt to imitate democracy. It is far bet- 
ter to be satisfied for a while with weak and 
chaotic organization than to fall under the domi- 
nation of syndicates patterned after the political 
institutions of the bourgeoisie." 22 Now we read 
in Lenin's great speech at the Pan-Eussian Con- 
gress of the Councils of National Economy, held 
in Moscow in May, 1918, that "there is a petty 
bourgeois tendency to transform the members of 
the Soviets into 'parliamentaries' on the one 
hand and, on the other, into bureaucrats. We 
must struggle against all that." 

As intellectual types, Lenin and Sorel are not 
very much alike. Sorel 's thought, in spite of its 
inconsistencies and erratic inequalities, is cer- 
tainly more interesting, more original, but much 
less coherent. This latter defect is due perhaps 
to the disadvantage he labors under of having a 
very wide but somewhat undigested erudition. 
Of course he often tries, like Lenin, to abuse 

21 Descartes, Discours de la methode. 

22 Sorel, Ibid., p. 268. 



THEORIES OF THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION 121 

"bourgeois science;" but that task is uncongenial 
enough, to a writer who on every page refers two 
or three times to works ninety per cent of which 
are not socialistic. 

Lenin is infinitely more adept than Sorel at 
abuse of "capitalistic science" and "capitalistic 
philosophy." In his political works he hardly 
ever quotes a scientist not of "the Party" — and 
if he does, it is to say, with all due deference to 
Sorel, that Bergson is a "bourgeois" and a 
"Christer!" 

As for the practical accomplishment of Eus- 
sian Bolshevism, it finds its condemnation in this 
fragment from Sorel which I will quote in full 
although it is a trifle long : 

"I call attention to the danger which revolu- 
tions, produced in an era of economic decay, pre- 
sent for the future of a civilization. All Marx- 
ians do not seem to have paid due attention to 
Marx's ideas on this subject. He thought that 
the i great catastrophe' would be preceded by a 
terrible economic crisis ; but we must not confuse 
the crisis Marx had in mind with any form of 
disintegration. Crises seem to him the result of 
a too daring adventure in production which has 
created productive agencies out of proportion to 
the automatic regulating methods at the disposal 
of capital. Such an adventure takes for granted 
that the future be regarded as promising for the 
most powerful capitalistic enterprises, and that 
confidence in a coming period of economic ex- 



122 LENIN 

pansion be absolutely preponderant at the time 
in question. For the niiddle classes, who may 
still find existence possible under the capitalist 
regime, to venture joining in revolt with the pro- 
letariat, prospects of production must seem to 
them as brilliant as the conquest of America must 
have seemed to the English peasants who left 
ancient Europe to hurl themselves into a life of 
danger in the new world." 

We wonder whether present-day Europe (not 
to mention Eussia) with its hundreds of billions 
of debts, offers, at just the moment chosen by 
Lenin, the glowing economic outlook which the 
author of the Reflections on Violence requires for 
successful revolution! 



CHAPTER VIII 

SOME FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS OF BOLSHEVISM 

COME now to the Communist doctrine as it is 
■■■ today. Humanite recently published 1 a long 
report which Lenin made to the Congress of the 
Third International at Moscow, in March, 1919. 
"It is," says Humanite, " a very important docu- 
ment in which the powerful theorist has set forth 
his ideas in the form of propositions on the con- 
troversial question of the dictatorship of the pro- 
letariat and bourgeois democracy. ' ' 

This document is indeed interesting. Power- 
ful or not, Lenin is unquestionably the only theor- 
ist of the Bolshevist doctrine. Bolshevism has 
its orators like Trotsky and Zinoviev; its men of 
letters, like Lunatcharsky, Kamenev, Vorovsky, 
Sfeklov; its business men, like Krassin; and final- 
ly its ikons like Maxim Gorky; it has, however, 
only one theorist and philosopher — Lenin. 2 As 
is evident, the authorship, as well as the formal 
official character of this document, 3 gives it ex- 

1 July 29, 30, and 31, 1919. 

2 Details of the personality of most of the Bolshevist lead- 
ers can be found in a very interesting book by Etienne Anto- 
nelli, La Russie bolcheviste, Paris, 1919. 

3 At the Third International all nations, I think, even the 
Hindus and the Patagonians, were represented. Messrs. Sa- 

123 



124 LENIN 

ceptional importance. We can consider it the 
last, the most authoritative, word on Bolshevist 
doctrine. 

Lenin begins by saying that to talk of democ- 
racy in general, without specifying the class you 
are talking about, "is just making fun of the 
principles of socialism and especially of the doc- 
trine of the class struggle." Why universal suf- 
frage, which gives absolutely equal rights de jure 
and practically de facto to the proletariat, the 
bourgeoisie, and the peasantry, in the transfor- 
mation of isociety through legislation, should be 
"bourgeois democracy," Lenin does not explain. 
He considers it an axiom posited on the authority 
of Karl Marx (that might be disputed), and on 
the historical experience of the Commune. 

"The Commune of Paris," he said, "lauded by 
all those who pose as socialists (for they know 
that this praise wins great and sincere sympathy 
for them among the laboring masses), showed 
with (Striking force the quite accidental, the very 
relative, value of bourgeois parliamentary gov- 
ernment and bourgeois democracy — institutions 
which may have marked great progress over the 
confusion of the Middle Ages, but which today, 
when we have the proletarian revolution before 
us, should be radically modified. Nevertheless, 

doul and Pascal spoke for France. I do not know the names 
of the German delegates; Karl Radek, who is a German off 
and on (when he is not an Austrian, a Pole, a Russian or a 
Ukrainian), could not have been there, as he was interned 
in Berlin. 



FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS OF BOLSHEVISM 125 

at just this time when the Soviet movement is 
carrying on the work of the Commune, the traitors 
to socialism forget all the practical lessons the 
Commune of Paris taught us and go on repeating 
the old bourgeois rhapsody on * democracy in 
general.' The Commune, my friends, was a non- 
parliamentary institution !" (§5). 

What a sudden passion for the Commune of 
Paris! And yet here is what Lenin wrote about 
this same Commune fourteen years ago: 

"History records, in the Commune, a labor 
government which was not then able to distinguish 
between the elements of the democratic, and the 
elements of the socialist revolution, which con- 
fused the problems of the struggle for the Kepub- 
lic with those of the struggle for socialism ; which 
was not able to solve the problem of a vigorous 
military offensive against Versailles; and which 
made the mistake of not taking possession of the 
Bank of France. ... In short, whether one is 
talking of the Commune of Paris, or of any 
other Commune, the answer will always be that 
it was a government which ours must not imi- 
tate." 4 

What is the Soviet Government, after all? Is 
it a government so inspired by the Commune as 
to avoid imitations of the Commune — this is what 
Lenin desired in 1905? Or is it, on the contrary, 
a Government "which, as everybody knows, is 

4 N. Lenin, Two Tactics of Social Democracy (in Russian), 
Geneva, 1905. The italics in the quotation are Lenin's. 



126 LENIN 

carrying on the work of the Commune," as Lenin 
said in 1919? 

In no other matter is the hypocrisy of Bolshe- 
vism so apparent as in this question of the form 
of government. For many years they themselves 
glorified the notion of a Constituent Assembly. 
We have already seen how Lenin advocated this 
idea in his Two Tactics of Social Democracy. We 
know that the resolutions of the first Bolshevist 
Congress (London, in May, 1905), inspired and 
dictated by Lenin, expressly proclaimed (§2) the 
necessity of "setting up, after the revolution, a 
provisional revolutionary government alone capa- 
ble of guaranteeing absolutely free elections, and 
of convoking on a basis of universal, equal, and 
direct suffrage with secret ballot, a Constituent 
Assembly expressing the real will of the people." 
Moreover, Trotsky published several pamphlets 
demanding the summoning of a Constituent As- 
sembly with equal urgency. Nor did all this take 
place before the war when problems presented 
themselves in a different light. In 1917, also, the 
Bolshevists were forever harping on the necessity 
of convoking the Constituent Assembly. The 
greatest crime they attributed to the provisional 
governments of Prince Lvov and of Kerensky 
was that of "sabotaging" the Constituent As- 
sembly and of delaying the general election on a 
variety of pretexts. 5 They did not, it is true, 

5 Trotsky had the impudence to repeat this reproach after 
the dissolution of the Assembly by the Bolshevists (The Ad- 
vent of Bolshevism, Paris, 1919, p. 48). 



FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS OF BOLSHEVISM 127 

abandon the Soviet idea, but at the same time 
they asked for the immediate convoking of the 
Assembly. 6 

It was only toward the end of 1917, when the 
obviously anti-Bolshevist results of the election 
— held under Soviet control and subject to the 
most brutal pressure — 'began to be seen, that their 
press started a campaign, at first as prudent and 
as tentative as it was treacherous, not so much 
against the principle of the Constituent Assembly 
as against the Constituent Assembly itself. The 
Bolshevists were obviously trying to see how the 
land lay: they did not know whether the people 
would follow their candidates. Then they gradu- 
ally grew bolder. It became evident that the 
public was too tired of fighting to give armed 
assistance to anyone whatsoever. They were sure 
of the government regiments in Petrograd, which 
had been bribed by the promise of not being sent 
to the front. The bulk of the army actually en- 
gaged with the Germans was clamoring to get 
home and would probably accept anything done 
by anybody who promised peace at any price. 
Lenin staked everything on one throw; the Con- 
stituent Assembly was dissolved in the most brutal 

6 This does not prevent Lenin from quietly writing today, 
in the same "Report on the German Independents": "The 
absurd attempt to combine the Soviet system (the dictator- 
ship of the proletariat) with the Constituent Assembly (the 
dictatorship of the bourgeoisie) clearly reveals the intellec- 
tual poverty of the yellow Socialists and Social Democrats — 
their narrow, bourgeois, reactionary outlook, and their timid 
retreat before the ever-increasing strength of the new de- 
mocracy of the proletariat." 



128 LENIN 

manner. The sailor Jelesniakof was the Bona- 
parte of this Communist i ' 18th Brumaire. ' ' Then 
the Bolshevists immediately began to trot ont ar- 
guments, or rather dogmatic affirmations, against 
the whole principle of universal suffrage. Today 
the Bolshevists have good reason for thinking 
that they are hated by the people, that elections 
based on universal suffrage throughout Kussia 
as a whole would show an overwhelming majority 
against them; and their theoretical assertions are 
as frank as may be. In this famous report (§21) 
Lenin explains quite bluntly: "The Constituent 
Assembly — that is to say, the dictatorship of the 
bourgeoisie,!" 

Today the Soviets are the whole show. It is 
Soviet this and Soviet that. The word and the 
idea have become world famous — the word adopt- 
ed by all the languages on earth, and the idea 
by all admirers of Bolshevism. Who indeed in- 
vented "Sovietism?" "Was it Lenin? Not at all. 7 

It was the notorious Parvus. 

Lenin, if you please, makes that assertion him- 
self in an article which appeared in the Munchner 
Post in November, 1918. Lenin at that time was 
very hostile to Sovietism, which he styles a "Men- 
chevist invention." It was in reply to Lenin's 

7 I have said before in the first chapter of this book that 
Lenin, according to his biography written by Zinoviev, at- 
tended only two or three sessions of the Soviet of Petrograd 
in 1905, and then only as a simple spectator in the public 
gallery. It is easily understood that if he had been a par- 
tisan of Sovietism at that time his role would have been less 
in the background; he would have been president in place of 
Krousalef-Nossar, Trotsky, or Parvus! 




FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS OF BOLSHEVISM 129 

strictures that Parvus set forth the following 
ideas : 

1. That the workers and soldiers would be 
devoted to the Eevolution only when they them- 
selves gained control of the revolutionary move- 
ment; 

2. That, for this reason, the interest of the 
proletariat would certainly become dominant in 
the Eevolution; 

3. And that this eventuality would finally lift 
the Eevolution out of the mire of factional quarrel 
and sectarian dispute inside the revolutionary 
movement. 8 

My interest here again is simply in keeping 
matters straight. Lenin is not the originator of 
' ' Sovietism, ' ' the great revolutionary idea which 
is now sweeping the world. It was Parvus, 
Parvus the henchman of the Sultan and of Kaiser 
William II, Parvus the speculator, Parvus, the 
war profiteer, 9 Parvus, finally, an outstanding 
German propagandist who, as such, also invented 
the ingenious plea — for socialist consumption — 
that Germany had the right to victory because 
she had the most powerful proletariat and the 
best developed industry and should therefore be 
preserved to lay the groundwork of world revo- 
lution ! 

Of course the fact that Parvus invented Soviet- 
ism does not prove anything against the idea 

8 E. Buisson, The Bolsheviks, Paris, 1919, p. 55. 

9 Parvus admits having made several millions in trade 
during the war. 



130 LENIN 

itself. Neither does it prove anything against 
Lenin. What difference does all that make, pro- 
vided Lenin did undergo a radical change of 
mind, did come sincerely to believe in Sovietism, 
as he had once sincerely believed in the Constit- 
uent Assembly? Unfortunately, however, he 
never sincerely believed in either of them. Here 
is another little pill for the idolators of both 
Lenin and the Soviet idea to swallow. I am taking 
it from a source which I consider above suspicion ; 
the same biography of Lenin by Zinoviev. The 
Communist Boswell, without suspecting the trou- 
ble he may be making in the end for his master 
and friend, sets forth Lenin's state of mind after 
the failure of his first attempt at a coup d'etat 
in July, 1917: "We went through a period," 
says Zinoviev, "when we feared everything was 
lost. Comrade Lenin even thought for a moment 
that the Soviets, corrupted by the Accordists, 10 
might not prove to be of much use. He threw 
out the hint that we might have to seize power 
over the heads of the Soviets." 11 

How splendid all this is! How grateful we 
should be to M. Zinoviev for giving us this infor- 
mation! Oh, the principles of these impostors! 
They stand by universal suffrage so long as they 
think it will give the Bolshevists a majority. They 
let universal suffrage go hang the moment they 
see that the Constituent Assembly is very decided- 

10 "Accordists" (Soglachateli) were those who favored an 
understanding with the more moderate political elements. 

11 Zinoviev, N. Lenin, Petrograd, 1918, pp. 58-59. 



FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS OF BOLSHEVISM 131 

ly against them. They then proclaim the holy 
principle of Sovietism! But if, at a given mo- 
ment, it looks as if the Soviets themselves were 
being " corrupted ' ' by anti-Bolshevism, the pass- 
word is immediately sent out that "we had per- 
haps better gain control without the Soviets.' ' 
For "Sovietism," then, some other phrase could 
have been substituted — the dictatorship of the 
Bolshevist Committee, perhaps, or the dictator- 
ship of Lenin — why not ? Eest assured that what- 
ever is proposed, the sympathizers of Bolshevism 
the world over, who live in a perpetual state of 
grace, would have immediately accepted it with 
the same awestruck and inspired admiration. 
The situation is quite as simple as that ! 

It is perfectly obvious that Lenin was deter- 
mined to gain power on any principle that would 
put him into power. He was bent on satisfying 
his dangerous mania for social experiment. All 
those famous " principles' ' which some people 
are so carefully studying today, all those theses, 
propositions, preambles, paragraphs (Lenin ex- 
cels in such rigmarole), were pretexts created 
ad hoc — that, and nothing but that ! 

Lenin, in fact, quickly realized that instead of 
acting "without the Soviets," it was more con- 
venient to emasculate and denature such expres- 
sions of popular will as survive in this parody of 
ideal democracy. 

Eussians who have lived under the Soviet 
regime cannot help laughing when they read the 



132 LENIN 

"Constitution" (" fundamental law" are the 
words used) of the "Federated Socialist Repub- 
lic of the Soviets of Russia, ' ' adopted by the Fifth 
Congress of the Soviets, July 10, 1918. 

It is not so much that the document is very 
badly and pretentiously written, with no regard 
for logic, and with a total absence of juridical 
training on the part of its authors. Logic, after 
all, is only a bourgeois prejudice ; and one cannot 
reasonably expect much technical jurisprudence 
among men who scarcely know how to read and 
write. But the amusing thing is the contrast 
between all these pretentious articles, sections, 
paragraphs, and items, and the sad realities they 
hide. 12 It requires extraordinary impudence to 
assert that the members of the Soviets are elected 
by the people; for there has never been such a 
cynical parody on the election system since the 
world began — suffice it to recall that, except for 
Bolshevists, there is no freedom of speech or 
press in Soviet Russia. But things are even worse 
than that: threats, extortion, terror, falsification 
of ballots. It is a case merely of nomination of 
candidates — that is all the elections in the 
"Socialist Federated Republic of the Soviets of 
Russia" amount to. The members of the Soviets 
are elected, but by Bolshevist committees! 

12 Lenin, Lunatcharsky, Kamenev and Vorovsky are, I be- 
lieve, the only Bolshevist leaders who have a certain amount 
of education. Trotsky is quite untrained as his writings 
show, though they reveal intelligence and unquestionable 
journalistic talent. As for Zinoviev, Uritsky, Volodarsky, 
Peters, Dsierjinsky, Sverdlov, Kalinine, Goukovsky, they 
are ignorant men in the strict sense of the word. 



FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS OF BOLSHEVISM 13a 

For that matter, the Bolshevists do not con- 
ceal this fact, or at least they do so very badly* 
Here is the resolution they adopted at the Con- 
gress of the Third International: 

"On the basis of the propositions and after 
hearing the reports of the representatives of the 
different countries, the Congress of the Commu- 
nist International declares that the main duty of 
communist parties in countries where the Soviet 
system does not yet exist is : 

"1. To explain to the laboring masses the his- 
torical significance, the political and practical 
necessity, of creating a new proletarian democ- 
racy to take the place of bourgeois democracy and 
the parliamentary system; 

"2. To develop the Soviet system among the 
employees in all manufacturing concerns, in army 
and navy, and among the tillers of the soil and 
the poor peasants ; 

"3. To make sure of a solid and trustworthy 
communist majority inside every Soviet." 13 

Some naive person will probably ask how a 
"solid and trustworthy" majority can be assured 
if the principle of free elections is admitted. But 
those of us who have seen these elections will 
not ask such questions. We know very well how 
it is assured. That is why we shall not pay much 
attention to this "Constitution of the Federated 
Socialist Eepublic of the Soviets of Kussia," 
limiting our comment to a few words about Article 

13 Humanite, July 31, 1919. 



134 LENIN 

IV, Chapter XIII, Paragraph 65, items a to g. 

This " paragraph' ' provides: 

"The following people can neither vote nor be 
elected : 

"a. Those who employ labor to derive profit 
therefrom. 

"b. Those who live on income not derived from 
their own labor: income from capital, industrial 
enterprise, landed property, etc. 

"c. Private business men, middlemen, or com- 
mercial travellers and salesmen. 

"d. Monks and priests belonging to ecclesiasti- 
cal and religious orders. 

"e. Officers and employees of the former police 
force, of the special corps of gendarmes, and of 
the 'Okhrana,' as well as members of the former 
ruling dynasty of Kussia. 

"f. Persons legally declared afflicted with men- 
tal diseases, the insane, and those under guard- 
ianship. 

"g. Persons condemned for felonies committed 
for gain, during the period fixed by law or court 
sentence." 

I will add, for the amusement of jurists, that the 
preceding paragraph (§64) enumerates, in just 
as detailed a manner but in a slightly different 
language, those who have the right to vote and 
be elected to the Soviets. The reader must there- 
fore not be astonished at not finding children 
mentioned under item g of paragraph 65. It is 
expressly stated in the preceding paragraph that 



FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS OF BOLSHEVISM 135 

the right to vote belongs to "all those who have 
attained the age of 18 on the day of the elec- 
tions. " The local Soviets, however, after rati- 
fication by the central authorities, may "lower 
the legal age fixed by this article." 14 This Chap- 
ter XIII "On Suffrage" with its numerous "and 
so forths" is so well drawn up that if the Con- 
stitution and all its articles, including paragraphs 
64 and 65, were not a joke in the first place, the 
authorities would be put to it to define which 
citizens of the "Federated Socialist Republic of 
the Soviets of Russia" have the right to vote and 
which have not. 

To cite only the most absurd passages in these 
two paragraphs: 

Though the industries of Russia have been 
nationalized, paragraph 65, section h, deprives 
those who derive an income from manufacturing 
enterprise from voting. Trade has all been na- 
tionalized (on paper, of course) ; and yet section 
c deals with private (?) business men, middlemen, 
and salesmen. Landed proprietors, among those 
who live on an income not derived from their own 
labor, are also disfranchised. What is this all 
about? The land, which has been "nationalized,'* 
is today in the hands of peasants. Does the in- 
come of a peasant who works with his family on a 

14 The local Soviets probably have no great knowledge of 
the Constitution and of the rights it gives them, and of this 
one in particular. In all administrative departments, all the 
commissariats swarm with boys who are under the legal age 
fixed by this article. 



136 LENIN 

hundred acres of " nationalized' 9 land, come from 
his work or from landed property? Has the 
peasant the right to vote or not? 

But, for that matter, if one were trying to 
catalogue all the foolish things in this " Consti- 
tution, " one could choose almost any paragraph. 
I selected the sections relating to the ballot be- 
cause it struck me that if this paragraph were 
literally applied almost all the Bolshevists them- 
selves would suffer; for with the exception of 
"members of the former ruling dynasty of Kus- 
sia," there are representatives among them of all 
the classes mentioned in sections a, To, c, &, e, f, 
and g, of paragraph 65. No end of adventurers 
are settling their little affairs under the Bolshe- 
vist standard. Some of the officials of the Soviet 
Eepublic have made fortunes which would make 
poor Bela Kuhn turn green with envy. This gen- 
tleman on "retiring" took the paltry sum of live 
million kronen with him. Nor are "persons con- 
demned for felonies committed for gain," a rare 
exception in the Soviet Government. And only 
one guilty person out of a thousand is condemned 
— thanks for that much! 15 Who else? The offi- 

15 Lunatcharsky, the People's Commissar of Education, re- 
cently said to a young French girl who was trying to get back 
her jewelry which had been left on deposit in a bank and who 
had gone through all the preliminary steps successfully only 
to meet refusal from the last official: "What can you ex- 
pect, Mademoiselle? You had hard luck, that's all. You 
have run across an honest man, probably the only one we 
have. Take his name! He is a pearl of rare quality." (Rob- 
ert Vaucher, L'Enfer bolchevik a Petrograd, Paris, 1919, p. 
217.) 



FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS OF BOLSHEVISM 137 

cers and members of the former police, of the spe- 
cial corps of gendarmes, and of the Okhrana? 
They are just swarming in Bolshevist circles. 
The Commissars themselves have often deplored 
the presence of this vermin in their midst "eating 
away," as they charge, "the flower of the com- 
munist regime." Lunatics? As many as you 
like, especially sadists. Who, for example, would 
call Peters a normal person? The monks! That 
depends on the order. Some of the Bolshevists 
(the best ones perhaps) seem to have altogether 
the mentality and psychology of our old ascet- 
ics. 16 

The dictatorship of the proletariat, which this 
Constitution tries to express in legal form, is a 
Marxian idea, expounded — as is undeniable — in 
many of the early works of Karl Marx. It is 
true that attempts have been made by real Marx- 
ians, such as Akimov, to interpret Marx in a dif- 
ferent sense. 17 Akimov tried to show that Marx 
understood the "dictatorship of the proletariat" 
as a democratic government. 

His arguments are not without some weight. 
The Commune, which Marx and Engels considered 
a form of the dictatorship of the proletariat, was 
in reality, even as they describe it, a government 

16 M. Pascal, a French officer who had been sent to Rus- 
sia and who suddenly turned Bolshevist, is an example of 
this. I had the pleasure of knowing him when he was a 
clerical Catholic. That was just two years ago. 

17 Akimov, Contribution to the Study of the Work of the 
Second Congress of the Social-Democratic Party of Russia, 
(in Russian), Geneva, 1904, pp. 36-53. 



138 LENIN 

based on universal suffrage applied to the region 
around Paris. He recalls how Marx (in The 
Class Struggle in France and in the 18th Bru- 
maire) accused the bourgeoisie of abandoning 
universal suffrage and of creating, thereby, "a 
class parliament of usurpation." He also points 
out that the dictatorship of the proletariat was 
never part of any early platform of the Marxian 
.socialist parties of western Europe. The pro- 
grammes of Erfurt and Vienna, those of the 
Belgian, Swedish, and Italian socialist Parties, 
and the statutes of the International, do not con- 
tain the phrase. It appears first in the declara- 
tion of the Social-Democratic Party in Eussia. 
Akimov finally quotes Marx's description and 
characterization of the dictatorship of the bour- 
geoisie (which, we must add, was far surpassed 
in horror by the present regime in Eussia), and 
very judiciously observes : 

' ' So there you have dictatorship ! Is that what 
the proletariat is asked to struggle and die for? 
Need we merely substitute the word 'proletariat' 
for the word ' bourgeoisie ' to get the ideal state 
of the future we all look forward to?" 

As I have already suggested, however, this ques- 
tion is of very little importance to us. Whether 
Karl Marx was or was not in favor of the dic- 
tatorship of the proletariat neither increases nor 
diminishes the value of it as a political concept, 
the fallacy of which has been clearly demon- 
strated by the Eussian experiment. 



FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS OF BOLSHEVISM 139 

Events in Eussia have shown first of all that 
the dictatorship of the proletariat is in reality 
a dictatorship over the proletariat. Never, in 
history, has a parliament been more weak, more 
impotent, more abject, and more lacking in all 
dignity, than the Workers' and Soldiers' Coun- 
cils in the face of their Bolshevist masters. Just 
remember that the Central Russian Council greet- 
ed the signing of the infamous Peace of Brest- 
Litovsk with a burst of applause, though that 
treaty aroused protest even on the part of the 
People's Commissars. The slight deference the 
Bolshevist leaders pay their parliament is evident 
enough, a degradation due on the one hand to 
the low average of education in the Russian work- 
ing class, and consequently in its delegates, and 
on the other to the election system described 
above. 

Edward Bernstein said twenty years ago 18 that 
the present moral and intellectual development 
of the working class was such that the dictator- 
ship of the proletariat could be nothing but a 
dictatorship of soap-boxers and editorial writers. 
This observation, which was made before the 
practical experience of our day, undoubtedly 
shows great wisdom. Those of us who have actu- 
ally lived through such a dictatorship can go even 
further. We may say that Bernstein's observa- 
tion holds true of large cities such as Moscow 

18 E. Bernstein, Theoretical Socialism and Practical Social 
Democracy, pp. 297-298. 



140 LENIN 

and Petrograd. In the provinces and villages the 
dictatorship of the proletariat is more often a 
dictatorship of bandits of the worst sort. The 
most lawless elements of the population — brig- 
ands, robbers, vagrants, ne'er-do-wells — emerge 
from their dens to terrify peasant, workingman 
and honest citizen and create horrors which still 
await their Dostoievsky. A dictatorship of soap- 
boxers in the large cities, a dictatorship of brig- 
ands in the villages and provinces, a combination 
of the two in the medium sized towns (as well as 
in certain central institutions such as the fa- 
mous Extraordinary Commission) — that is what 
the dictatorship of the proletariat means. 

It is very likely the experiment would not be 
materially different in the most civilized western 
countries. 

We conclude, therefore, that every socialist 
party which aims to substitute clear and accurate 
thinking for pure demagogy must take the con- 
cept of the dictatorship of the proletariat in hand 
and put an end to it as a most unfortunate idea. 
In Eussia the Socialist Labor Party did this ex- 
pressly and with great emphasis by saying that 
it did not recognize any dictatorship whatsoever, 
whether that of the proletariat or of any other 
class, group, or persons. The socialist parties of 
the west would do well to follow this example. 

In democratic countries, where the working 
proletariat represents a majority of the popu- 
lation, the idea is absurd, since universal suffrage 



FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS OF BOLSHEVISM 141 

gives the workers a deciding voice on all political 
questions. If these countries are not ruled by 
socialist governments, that proves simply that 
all the workers are not socialists; in which case 
a dictatorship of the proletariat, even if it were 
a bona fide one (not, that is, a dictatorship of 
cliques) would always mean a tyranny of one 
part of the working class over the rest and over 
the majority of the population as a whole. In 
a country like Eussia where the proletariat is a 
small minority, the system is the worst kind of 
autocracy, and one which ends by arousing the 
hatred of the great majority of the population, 
and of the peasants in particular, against all pro- 
letarian and socialist ideas. This state of affairs 
is not only unjustified, but extremely dangerous 
for society at large. The harm which the Bol- 
shevists have done to socialism cannot be reck- 
oned. The lesson to be derived from this should 
be a general repudiation of this evil doctrine on 
the part of all socialists. 

Will this be the case? The opposite appears 
more likely; for it seems that hard and costly 
experience alone is able to teach humanity any- 
thing. 



CHAPTER IX 

LENIN AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

ALONG with the "dictatorship of the pro- 
letariat,' ' Lenin's report to the Congress of 
the Third International deals with two other 
questions of no less importance — freedom of as- 
sembly, and freedom of speech. Here is what 
Lenin says: 

"Moreover, the workers know very well that 
even in the most democratic bourgeois republic 
'freedom of assembly' is only an empty phrase; 
because the rich always have the best public and 
private buildings at their disposal; they have 
ample leisure; and they enjoy the protection of 
the bourgeois authorities. The proletariat in the 
cities and in the country as well as the unprop- 
ertied peasants, an overwhelming majority of 
the population in short, have none of these three 
advantages. As long as things stand this way, 
equality, 'pure democracy,' is nothing but a snare 
and a delusion. To obtain true equality and in- 
augurate true democracy for the workers, their 
oppressors must first be deprived of their mag- 
nificent public and private buildings ; the workers 
must be given leisure; and freedom of assembly 
must be assured, not by the sons of the aristocracy 

142 



LENIN AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 143 

or the capitalist class placed, as officers, in com- 
mand of stupid soldiers, but by armed workers 
tliems elves.' ' 

It is evident that Lenin knows how to make 
full use of the injustices of the capitalist world. 
Who can deny that such injustices are as numer- 
ous as they are cruel? And yet this whole tirade 
is as false as it is hypocritical. 

Freedom of assembly in the bourgeois demo- 
cratic republics is not an empty phrase; and 
Lenin, who so often had the floor in meetings in 
Paris, Zurich and Geneva, knows this better than 
anybody else. The "sons of the aristocracy' ' and 
"capitalist officers" who guarded these meetings 
in normal times before the war were, actually, 
policemen of the civil service who were not much 
interested in what they heard and were not much 
inclined to mix in. Old timers might perhaps be 
able to mention a few cases where freedom of 
speech was interfered with by the police; but 
everyone must admit that such cases were ex- 
tremely rare — political anachronisms, so to speak. 
I personally do not remember any such acts of 
violence. In the Saint Paul Riding School, in 
the Salle Wagram, and in Hyde Park, I have 
heard the most inflammatory tirades against the 
existing order, against capitalism, against gov- 
ernment in general and governments in particu- 
lar (against the Czar, Nicholas I, and M. Aristide 
Briand, for example) ; I have heard anarchistic 
and regicide speeches; I have heard Sebastian 



144 LENIN 

Faure and the Spanish anarchists ; and never did 
the police who were listening inside or watching 
at the door — with faces expressing the reverse 
of sympathy — intervene in any way. 

In London the police often risk their lives to 
uphold freedom of speech, interfering to protect 
from the violence of an enraged crowd revolu- 
tionary orators who insult the government and 
the police. In fact the only cases I ever person- 
ally witnessed, where meetings were interrupted 
by brute force of arms, were in Eussia, under 
the Czar and at the beginning 1 of the Bolshevist 
rule. I will also venture the opinion that the 
armed workers led by Bolshevist boys behaved 
far more brutally than the gendarmes of the Czar 
under the leadership of the ' * sons of the aristoc- 
racy." 

But, says Lenin, the rich have the "best pub- 
lic and private buildings" at their disposal. The 
most magnificent of these unquestionably are the 
Parliament buildings. Very well ! In the Palais- 
Bourbon, in the House of Commons, and in the 
Eeichstag, all orators, rich and poor, have one 
and the same right to absolute freedom of speech. 
The only exception is, again, the Tauride Palace 
at Petrograd, which has been visited by "stupid 
(Soldiers' ' on three occasions. The First and the 
Second Duma were dissolved by the Czar's police, 

1 1 say "at the beginning" ; because later on under the 
"Terror," no non-Bolshevist meetings were allowed; and any 
anti-Bolshevist speaker who dared show himself at a govern- 
ment meeting, would have been jailed immediately, or else 
shot as a saboteur, White Guard, or counter-revolutionist. 



LENIN AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 145 

who had unsuccessfully barred the gates of the 
Palace before the sessions began. The third case 
was the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly 
by Lenin's sailors. This last spectacle was one 
of unheard-of vulgarity and brutality. The ma- 
rines hurled obscenities and threats at the depu- 
ties, covering them with their guns under the 
benevolent eyes of Lenin himself — that great 
defender of liberty against the abuses of the 
bourgeoisie ! 

But besides Parliament buildings? It cannot 
be denied that the rich have finer edifices than 
the poor. But no one can say in good faith that 
the poor cannot hold meetings for lack of build- 
ings in the so-called bourgeois republics. The 
rich and the poor generally hold their meetings 
in the same places, which either cost nothing, as 
is the case with Hyde Park in London, or which 
are within the reach of all pocketbooks, as is the 
case with the Salle des Societes Savantes or the 
Salle Wagram in Paris, where L' Action Fran- 
caise and the Socialist Party hold meetings in 
turn. As for leisure, everybody knows that social- 
ist meetings are usually better attended than 
those of the rich; for the people who go to the 
former are more enthusiastic, more energetic, and 
interested in a larger variety of questions, than 
those who go to bourgeois meetings. 

The second problem which Lenin " solves' ' in 
the same report is that of the freedom of the 
press : 



146 LENIN 

"The 'freedom of the press' is also one of the 
essential principles of 'pure democracy.' But 
the workers and the socialists of all countries 
know a thousand times over that this freedom is 
a delusion so long as the best printing machines 
and the largest supplies of paper are controlled 
by the capitalists and so long as capitalism keeps 
its hold over the press itself, a hold which seems 
to be more decided, more brutal and more cynical 
the further democracy and the republican system 
are developed — the best illustration is the United 
States. 

"To obtain real equality and true democracy 
for the workers — industrial and agricultural — the 
capitalists must first be deprived of power to 
employ writers in their service, to buy publish- 
ing houses and corrupt newspapers. For this 
reason the yoke of capitalism must be thrown 
off, the oppressors must be dispossessed and their 
power lessened. To the capitalist, 'freedom' 
means the freedom of the rich to profiteer and 
the freedom of the workers to starve. 

"Freedom of the press means to the capital- 
ists the freedom of the rich to buy the press and 
to create and misguide so-called public opinion. 
The defenders of 'pure democracy' again show 
themselves defenders of one of the basest and 
lowest systems ever devised for the domination by 
the rich over the organs of education of the poor. 
They are impostors who exploit exalted and de- 
ceptive phrases to prevent the people from ac- 



LENIN AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 147 

complishing its historic task, the liberation of the 
press from the clutches of capitalism. 

"Real freedom and equality can be assured 
only by a Communist regime, which will not allow 
anyone to acquire wealth at the expense of 
others, which will make it, in a literal material 
sense, impossible for the press to be enslaved, 
either directly or indirectly, by the power of 
wealth, and under which each worker (or equal 
groups of workers) will have equal rights in the 
use of publishing houses and supplies of paper 
which then will belong to the conimunity. ' ' 

Now all this is so much dialectic legerdemain 
from a trickster of no serious scruples. No one 
is going to deny the existence of terrible abuses 
of the power of wealth in the realm of journal- 
ism. But to deduce from them that the freedom 
of the press in society today is only a delusion 
is to betray very little zeal for the truth. With 
all the abuses of capitalism with which we have 
to contend (of this I will have something more to 
say in the last chapter of this book), the anti- 
capitalist press in democratic republics such as 
France and Switzerland, and even in constitu- 
tional monarchies such as England or Italy, has 
ample means for subsisting and for carrying on 
the most violent campaigns against existing gov- 
ernments and against capitalism. 

This is possible for two reasons. In every 
country there are socialistic capitalists and even 
Bolshevistic capitalists who for some reason or 



148 LENIN 

other are willing to give money to organs devoted 
to attack on the class to which these philan- 
thropists belong. 2 Moreover, public subscriptions, 
such as the one recently started by Humanite and 
which, I think, brought in five hundred thousand 
francs, make the creation and development of 
great socialist organs possible. All free countries 
have them. The German Vorivarts, and Freiheit, 
the Italian Avanti! and the French Humanite have 
circulations of hundreds of thousands. These 
organs were absolutely unrestricted before the 
war. And even today, with all the abuses and 
stupidities of post-war reaction, the press which 
is most hostile to the existing authorities, 
{Avanti! in Italy, or the Populaire in Paris, for 
example, which are near-Bolshevist or pro-Bol- 
shevist organs) have practically complete free- 
dom to say anything they choose. 3 In my judg- 
ment all those who would read Humanite or the 
Populaire, if these organs had "the very best 
printing presses and largest supplies of paper at 
their disposal," as Lenin requires, already read 
them now. 

But it is a piece of impudence in the Chief of 
the Soviet Government to be accusing the bour- 
geois republics of failure to respect the freedom 
of the press ! In Bussia, one has to go back, not 

2 Krassin, one of the three present dictators of Soviet 
Russia, is an example of a Bolshevist millionaire. 

3 No sincere democrat will deny that censorship is the most 
stupid and ineffective institution in the world; and we hope 
that full freedom of speech will be restored at once to all 
newspapers. 



LENIN AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 149 

to the reign of Nicholas II, but to that of Nicholas 
I, to find anything comparable to the cynical 
brutality with which the Bolshevist Government 
has suppressed every trace of an independent 
press. 

This impudence, however, is quite outdone by 
what the Bolshevist leader says, in the same docu- 
ment, with reference to the Terror: 

"The murder of Karl Liebknecht and Eosa 
Luxemburg is an important event in world his- 
tory not only because the best leaders of the true 
International had such a tragic end, but because 
the most highly developed State in Europe (we 
could say without exaggeration, in the whole 
world) has strikingly revealed its class character. 
If people under arrest, placed that is, by the 
authority of the State under the protection of the 
State, could be massacred with impunity by offi- 
cers and capitalists serving under a government 
of ' patriotic socialists,' it follows that the demo- 
cratic Eepublic, where such a thing is possible, 
is really a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. 

"Those who express their indignation at the 
murder of Liebknecht and Eosa Luxemburg but 
do not see this truth are either idiots or hypo- 
crites. ' Freedom/ in one of the freest republics 
in the world, the Eepublic of Germany, means 
freedom with impunity to kill the leaders of the 
proletariat after their arrest! It cannot be any 
different as long as capitalism lasts; for the de- 
velopment of democracy has intensified rather 



150 LENIN 

than relieved the class struggle, which, because of 
the results and tendencies of war, has now reached 
a paroxysm.' ' 

The murder of the unfortunate Karl Liebknecht 
and Eosa Luxemburg was without doubt an inex- 
cusable act. The government of Scheidemann, 
however, not only disavowed this crime, but im- 
mediately took steps to avenge it. This is not, of 
course, particularly creditable to the government 
of "socialistic patriots.' ' Even under Nicholas 
II, attempts were made to apprehend and punish 
the murderers of Herzenstein and Iollos. It is 
therefore as false as it is impudent to say that 
"freedom in one of the freest republics of the 
world, the Eepublic of Germany, means freedom 
with impunity to kill the leaders of the proletariat, 
after their arrest ! " 

On the other hand, in the Soviet Eepublic, "it is 
absolutely true that the assassination of political 
enemies is not only tolerated but even ordered by 
the government ; and it takes place every day. I 
am speaking not only of acts such as the unpun- 
ished murder of Chingarev and Kokochkine, 
crimes far more abominable than the German 
murders ; because those two unfortunate deputies 
were not militants like Liebknecht and Eosa Lux- 
emburg, but peaceful, and, as it happened, de- 
fenseless men, invalids, killed in the most cowardly 
way in a hospital! The government of Lenin 
knew the names of their assassins very well, for 
they were published broadcast in the newspapers. 



LENIN AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 151 

Lenin did not dare, or did not care, to prosecute 
them; though he did in fact disavow the crime. 
This was during the early Bolshevist days when 
the government was still rather particular ! Now, 
people are being arrested every day, "placed, that 
is, by the authority of the State under the pro- 
tection of the State," only to be basely and cyn- 
ically murdered, hundreds of them, at the order 
of the Soviet Government, without trial, often 
without being formally charged with any crime, 
and sometimes without leaving any record of their 
fate. And in the face of such things, the hypocrit- 
ical head of the Soviet Government dares to accuse 
the democratic "socialist patriot" regime in Ger- 
many of the murder of Liebknecht and Kosa Lux- 
emburg! This is the height of cynicism! 

I have already shown by a quotation taken from 
an early work of Lenin's the falsity of his asser- 
tion that his Terror was the answer of the perse- 
cuted Bolshevists (poor devils!) to the conspir- 
acies of the imperialists and counter-revolution- 
ists the world over. The Terror was a premed- 
itated act. What, then, is its value ? 

I am not naive enough to suppose that the abom- 
inations committed by the Bolshevists can do them 
much harm in the opinion of the indifferent pub- 
lic, or even before the "tribunal of history." Acts 
of cruelty are never condemned once they succeed 
in their object. In our days of hatred and vio- 
lence, in our world of blood and iron, those are 
condemned rather who are not "hard" enough. 



152 LENIN 

The spillers of the most blood are called the real, 
the strong, the masters of men. To shrink from 
bloodshed is to be weak, incapable, impotent. The 
usual reproach brought against Prince Lvov and 
Kerensky is that they did not shoot Lenin the 
day he first opened his mouth. Lenin himself 
seems not to understand this stupidity on their 
part — to bear them a grudge for it. 

No, history will not condemn the Bolshevists 
for massacring tens of thousands of bourgeois 
citizens any more than it will condemn those who 
will finally redeem Eussia for massacring tens 
of thousands of Bolshevists. General Manner- 
heim, one of the war's heroes — he won the Eussian 
Cross of Saint George and the German Iron Cross 
in a single war — was not discredited for shooting 
fifty thousand workmen, was he ? Nor will Uritsky 
and Lenin be. These ' ' condemnations of history ' ' 
are part of the conventional flim-flam of humanity, 
as all politicians know perfectly well. How many 
little Eobespierres and Napoleons (bourgeois and 
socialists of a feather) have I not met in the 
course of the last two years who boasted openly 
of their "atrocities" in the name of Eussia re- 
deemed, dressing them up a bit, probably, to fit 
the caveman pose better! 

The fact is we are always confronted with this 
great argument: the French Eevolution (which 
has had such a great influence on the imagina- 
tions of most demagogues down to our day) shows 
massacres, crimes, and atrocities quite as horrible 



LENIN AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 153 

as the ones we are witnessing today! This is 
Lenin's favorite argument: "You call us cruel? 
But in 1793, the bourgeoisie was just as cruel as 
we are!" 

Sinister precedents for the Bolshevist Terror 
are indeed not lacking. The massacres of Paris 
were as bad as those of Petrograd are now; the 
judicial drownings of Nantes are no better than 
those of Kronstadt and Sebastopol; Samson and 
his guillotine quite rivals the Chinese firing- 
squads employed by the Extraordinary Commis- 
sion. 

And yet the Bolshevist massacres arouse much 
more disgust than those of that great period. 
They are repulsive, first of all, because of the 
imitative character of their cruelty. It is as if 
the Bolshevists were consciously trying to ape all 
the worst features of the great men of the French 
Terror: massacre for massacre, hostage for hos- 
tage, drowning for drowning. They have had 
their September, their Kevolutionary Tribunal, 
their common burial trench, their Louis XVI, their 
Marie Antoinette, their Dauphin, their ex-Nobles, 
as well as their Marat, their Carrier, and their 
Fouquier-Tinville. The guillotine alone was lack- 
ing ; and Trotsky, the great dramatizer among the 
Bolshevist leaders, even thought of that early in 
the Eevolution. If the Bolshevists were forced 
to rest content with the prosaic Chinese firing 
squad or the Lettish bayonet, they owe that humil- 
iation to the backwardness, merely, of the Russian 



154 LENIN 

steel industry. Another notable lack in the land- 
scape of the Enssian Terror is the popular enthu- 
siasm around the scaffold. Common people do 
gaze at the jails of the Extraordinary Commis- 
sion, but with expressions of somber stupor on 
their faces. 

There was some reason to think, was there not, 
that a century of enlightenment could not have 
passed without teaching mankind a few lessons? 
The terrorist fanaticism of Robespierre, like the 
Catholic fanaticism of Torquemada, had at least 
the merit of being sincere. Was it conceivable 
that a new Inquisition could ever rekindle the 
auto-da-fe anywhere in Europe? Surely the dis- 
ciples of Karl Marx must have made some prog- 
ress over the disciples of Jean- Jacques Rousseau ! 
Did they not see, moreover, what the Terror led 
to in 1793? 

Nothing of the kind, alas ! And, unfortunately, 
these people call themselves socialists. Up to the 
present time, socialism had never undergone the 
acid test of governmental authority, unless the ex- 
periment of the Paris Commune, which was short 
and indecisive, be called such. Hitherto, social- 
ism has had its apostles and its martyrs ; but never 
its inquisitors or its executioners! But the Bol- 
shevists happen to call themselves socialists ; and 
many people will find it to their interests to be- 
lieve them. In spite of anything socialists may 
say, socialism will always be charged with the 
abominable Saint Bartholomews of the Kremlin. 



LENIN AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 155 

"You are no better than the others," the "im- 
partial" witness will retort to our defence. 

The Bolshevists, however, were right in claim- 
ing to be imitating the French Eevolution as 
closely as possible. Nothing did more harm to 
Kussia and to the anti-Bolshevist cause than this 
easy external analogy, this superficial resem- 
blance, between the two upheavals. This parallel 
influenced many intellectuals in Europe, begin- 
ning with M. Bomain Bolland, who had almost 
agreed, so it seems, to be the "Kant" of the Com- 
munist Eevolution; and ending with President 
Wilson, who refused to become its "Brunswick." 4 
In the end, also, it gained, indirectly, no little sym- 
pathy for the Bolshevists among people who knew 
them only through the newspapers. I may say, 
without fear of paradox, that the hostility which 
some organs of the European press showed Bol- 
shevism on the grounds of atrocities was very 
valuable to Lenin — so solidly is the moral and 
political reputation of those organs established. 
An influential member of the British Labor Party 
told Mr. Titov and myself quite seriously that 
"the British workers were sympathetic with the 
Bolshevists because our capitalistic press is not." 

The external likeness of the French and the 
Kussian Bevolutions is indeed quite striking in 
some respects. The succession of events is much 
the same: enthusiasm, violence, civil war, terror, 

4 Mr. Wilson at one time formerly pronounced very severe 
judgment on the French Revolution, not alone in its acts, but 
also in its ideas. 



156 LENIN 

chaos. A weak Czar wheedled by -a foreign and 
unpopular Czarina; a liberal aristocrat leading 
during the first period of revolution ; 5 then for the 
Gironde, overthrown and persecuted, and the 
' ' Mountain " victorious and triumphant, a Eussian 
Vendee (we really went France one better — we had 
two) helped by foreign powers bent on "drown- 
ing the Revolution in its own blood"; and "those 
awful emigres and counter-revolutionists" setting 
up another Coblentz in Paris and asking for the 
intervention of the reactionary armies ; and those 
heroic revolutionists who, like the men of the 
Convention, astounded the world with their mad 
energy, raising armies, winning victories, taking 
insurgent towns by storm and razing them ( Jaro- 
shiv surely is as good at Toulon!) . . . 

But how different the performance looks when 
you observe the acting from a front seat and hap- 
pen to know the actors off-stage! That "miser- 
able Russian Coblentz ? ' first of all ! What strange 
ingredients in that "gang of reactionaries" who 
are stabbing the Bolshevist Revolution in the 
back! Those Comtes D'Artois, those Russian 
Condes ! And who are they, if you please? They 
are Plekhanov, Kropotkin, Tchaikovsky, Lopatin, 
Madame Brechkovsky — Babuska( !), Axelrod, Zas- 
oulitch, Vera Gigner, Ivanof , old war-horses, all of 
them, old champions of Socialism and Democracy, 
everybody that Russia is proud of in the annals of 

5 This seems to be a special predilection of revolutions : 
they begin with the titled noble ; a Marquis de Lafayette or a 
Prince Lvov, a Maximilian of Baden or a Count Carolyi. 




LENIN AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 157 

her heroic history ! 6 They are Korolenko, the great 
writer; Miakotone; Pechekhonov; Potresov — 
publicists of spotless reputation, known and es- 
teemed in all countries ! They are nine-tenths of 
the people who count for something in the culture 
expressing itself in Eussian today! And what is 
the slogan of these servants of greedy reaction? 
Is it the "vive le roi" of the emigres of Coblentz? 
No, they proclaim the sovereignty of the Constit- 
uent Assembly, based on that universal suffrage 
at which the Bolshevists so scoff! 

On the other hand, it would be hard to find any- 
thing in the history of the French Revolution 
analogous to the friendship in which the Bolshe- 
vists consorted with the foreign enemy. 7 I have 
already explained why I never regarded Lenin as 
a paid agent of German imperialism. It is never- 
theless true that the part the Germans played in 
the history of the coup d'etat of October, first in 
the revolutionary, and later in the governmental 
activities of the Bolshevists, is very great. It is 
known that Austria-Hungary offered a separate 
peace to the Government of Bus sia just a few 
days before the Bolshevist uprising. Did the 
government of William II discover the Austrian 
plan from some secret source? Did the Kaiser 
order his agents in Eussia to hasten the coup 
d'etat? Or is it all a matter of pure coincidence? 

6 The Bolshevists have not a single name with which to 
counter this glorious Pleiades of their enemies. 

7 Interesting views on this question may be found in a book 
by Mr. Charles Dumas: La Verite sur les Bolsheviks, Paris, 
1919. 



158 LENIN 

History may be able some day to untangle the 
jumbled lines of intrigue connecting Parvus, 
Ganetzky and Co. in Wilhelmstrasse, with the 
Smolny Institute. People in Petrograd at the 
time were able to observe with their own eyes the 
open activities of the German agents who were 
almost publicly buying machine-guns from the 
Eussian soldiers whom they had bribed. Who, in- 
deed, except German agents, could have needed 
Eussian machine-guns and cannon? 

From the point of view of the International it 
was legitimate, as the Bolshevists claim, to accept 
aid from the German imperialists — not, of course 
to help Germany, but as a war measure to their 
own advantage. 8 We can grant all this because 
Lenin will have it so. However, let us not look 
for precedents in the history of the French Eev- 
olution. I cannot see Eobespierre using money 
supplied by Pitt, any more than I can see Danton 
signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. To them 
national self-respect was not, as it is to Lenin, 
"the point of view of a duel-fighting country 
squire"; and treaties were not, as Trotsky con- 
sidered them in the sinister comedy of Brest- 
Litovsk, opportunities for satisfying so-called 
revolutionary, but in reality very bourgeois, van- 
ity, by rubbing elbows with counts and princes 
in diplomatic tournaments ! 

Fate was surely kind to the Bolshevists in this 

8 At the same time the Bolshevists were accusing the inter' 
ventionists of seeking aid from the democratic Allies. 



LENIN AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 159 

disastrous story of the separate peace. If tliey 
find any sympathy at all left for them today in 
France, England and Italy, they owe it indeed to 
their lucky star. Who could have foreseen, at the 
end of 1917, that the Allies would win a decisive 
victory without the help of Russia? The Bolshe- 
vists did not at any rate; and Trotsky said pub- 
licly, in a speech on February 15, 1918, that he did 
not consider such an Allied triumph at all prob- 
able. Was the Peace of Brest-Litovsk 9 really a 
clever and deeply subtle manoeuver? Is it true 
that the Bolshevists "took the Germans in," as 
they are boasting today? Not at all. The Kuhl- 
manns and the Czernins knew very well what they 
were doing. The Peace of Brest-Litovsk was, to 
use Lenin's famous expression, much more of a 
peredychka, a breathing space, for the Germans 
than it was for the Bolshevists. It enormously 
increased their chances of success on the Western 
Front where they were concentrating all the forces 
freed by the Russian collapse. 10 

9 "The Bolshevists pride themselves today on having out- 
guessed the German imperialists who made them capitulate 
at Brest-Litovsk; they regard the German revolution as their 
work. In reality, though they doubtless gave large sums of 
money to the Sparticides, they did a great deal more in Rus- 
sia to prevent the overthrow of William II than they did in 
Germany to bring it about. Their evil influence on the Rus- 
sian army, and the fear which the example of our country 
inspired in the Germans, retarded the defeat of Prussian mil- 
itarism a full year." ( Landau- Aldanov, La Paix des Peu- 
ples, p. 96.) 

10 There were 137 divisions of the enemy on the Russian 
front in 1916; and they were under command of the three 
most competent generals the Germans had: Hindenburg, 
Ludendorf, and Mackensen. There were 146 in August, 1917, 
on the eve of the fall of Kerensky. How many remained 



160 LENIN 

What would have happened if the Germans had 
won a decisive victory before the arrival of Amer- 
ican reinforcements (whether the United States 
should arrive in time was purely a technical ques- 
tion, the answer to which was not foreseen by far 
greater experts than the Bolshevists — by Luden- 
dorf and Hindenburg notably) ? With the western 
democracies crushed, triumphant German impe- 
rialism would not have left Russian Bolshevism in 
power for twenty-four hours. Having used the 
Bolshevists for their purposes, the Germans would 
have dismissed them with as little ceremony as 
was actually the case in the Ukraine and in Fin- 
land. They would have found a Skoropadsky or 
a Mannerheim for Moscow also. 

This did not happen, however, and for a thou- 
sand reasons : strategic blunders, in the first place, 
of Ludendorf , who failed to drive the Allied army 
at Salonika into the sea in time ; and to hoard his 
reserves sufficiently during the great offensive of 
April, 1918 ; a great effort on the part of the Allied 
armies and industries ; famine in Germany created 
by the blockade; the collapse of Bulgaria and 
Turkey; and numberless other things. Among 
these latter was the Bolshevist propaganda in Ger- 
many, which, however, was but a single factor of 
very limited importance, and which would have 
had no importance at all without the concurrent 

after the Peace of Brest-Li tovsk? This fact alone was 
enough, I think, to justify the Russians who remained faith- 
ful to the Alliance in considering the invitation to Prinkipo 
given by the Entente to "all parties in Russia," a downright 
insult. 



LENIN AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 161 

action of the other factors. The Bolshevists did 
not see the situation as a whole. Brest-Litovsk 
rendered German imperialism a great service 
which, however, was not great enough — no ser- 
vice would have been great enough — to assure a 
German victory. And such a victory would have 
meant the ruin of democracy and of socialism, to 
say nothing of Bolshevism. 

The peace of Brest-Litovsk was black treason 
quite as much from the proletarian as from the 
patriotic point of view. Today after the Allied 
victory the matter presents a very different aspect 
from what it had in June, 1918, when the Germans 
were at Chateau- Thierry; and especially from 
what it would have had, if it had resulted in the 
setting up of a military German government in 
Paris as well as in Moscow. I wonder what M. 
Jean Longuet would have said then! 

However, Germany may, as the end proved, 
have made a very bad bargain at Brest-Litovsk. 
Since the collapse of Russia did not save her from 
decisive military defeat and complete capitulation, 
it might have served her purposes better if a dem- 
ocratic Russia, the Russia of the Provisional Gov- 
ernment, had been represented in the conference 
at Paris on the same footing as France and Eng- 
land. A Russia with a powerful voice in the dis- 
cussion would probably have insisted, for many 
reasons pertinent to her vital interests, on the 
modification of some of the terms of the peace im- 
posed upon Germany by the victors. But one 



162 LENIN 

cannot foresee every thing. The political consid- 
erations of the German imperialists were based on 
the chance of victory or at least of a draw. Does 
not this prove that the Bolshevists are wrong in 
boasting about the Peace of Brest-Litovsk as a 
master stroke evincing the great wisdom of Lenin % 
In striking parallels with the French Revolution, 
they do not, in fact, emphasize this boast ; they are 
willing to overlook this " master-stroke.' ' And 
they are absolutely right. There is no example of 
such treachery in the men of the Convention, with 
whom the Bolshevists are so fond of comparing 
themselves. 

There is another fundamental difference be- 
tween the French Eevolution and the Russian 
Revolution: in France, war came out of revolu- 
tion ; in Russia, revolution out of war. 

The luxuriant blossoming of liberal ideas in the 
eighteenth century, as well as economic develop- 
ment in France, found its expression in the Great 
Revolution. The potential energy of the French 
people, which had been storing up for centuries, 
then became kinetic. The twenty-five years of 
war which followed were sustained on this for- 
midable surplus of forces. Not only Valmy and 
Marengo but Austerlitz and Jena also are due, at 
least in part, to the enthusiasm behind these revo- 
lutionary ideas. The soldier who died for the glory 
of Napoleon thought he was dying for freedom ! 

How different is the Russian Revolution! Not 
only did it have the abortive preamble of 1905- 



LENIN AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 163 

1907, which wearied and discouraged the present 
generation; but the Russian people entered upon 
victorious Eevolution in 1917, already fatigued by 
three years of war waged under conditions in- 
finitely more difficult than those confronting the 
other Allied peoples. 11 The material and moral 
effects they had made had quite exhausted them. 
Life was disorganized even at the beginning of 
the Revolution. All the evils which seemed to 
assume terrifying proportions as the Revolution 
wore on and which are often attributed to the Rev- 
olution entirely — desertion, graft and extrav- 
agance, economic chaos, the breakdown of the rail- 
ways, the closing of the factories — already existed 
under the Czar. The revolution simply advertised 
them, and with understandable exaggeration. 

The war itself was a terrific revolution which 
drained off the energies of the Russian people 
and sowed the seeds of a bleak and blear discour- 
agement. When the Revolution broke we had lost 

11 Russia was under blockade for more than five years, a 
blockade more complete than the German blockade; for 
though Russia, for two or three years, received some aid 
from her allies over the slender threads of the Siberian Rail- 
road and the line of the north, Germany received far more 
replenishment, not only from her own allies, but from 
Switzerland, the Netherlands, Denmark, the Scandinavian 
countries, Italy and Roumania (for a time), and from the 
rich lands she conquered in France, Belgium and Poland. 
Moreover, if Germany was crushed by a four years' blockade, 
in spite of her wonderful organization, what can be said of 
Russia, which was always very badly administered and in- 
finitely worse administered after October, 1917? That she 
has borne up at all proves the great natural richness of the 
country and a vitality in its people as extraordinary as their 
passivity. How long would England have survived had she 
been blockaded like Russia? 



164 LENIN 

faith in everything. This collapse of Enssian 
morale was not due, as is sometimes alleged, to 
military reverses solely. Had that been the case, 
the revolution would have come in 1915, after the 
great retreat, involving the fall of Kovno, Brest- 
Litovsk and Ivangorod. The fact is, Russia did 
not suffer a real " knock-out " during the first 
three years of the war. The reverses on the other 
fronts were quite similar to hers. Besides she 
had great successes: Eastern Galicia had been 
conquered; the Russian flag was floating over 
Erzerum and Trebizond. The strategic situation 
in February, 1917, was not so very, very bad. But 
faith had gone. Intellectually, from the very be- 
ginning of the war, Russia had been in the state 
of mind which Victor Hugo attributed to France 
in 1870: "The outlook is dark — fraught with pos- 
sibilities of the best and worst: France herself 
deserves an Austerlitz, but the Empire a Wa- 
terloo !" 

In point of fact the Revolution took place almost 
mechanically. The country had just enough en- 
ergy left to do away with the old regime. The 
great enthusiasm needed to carry on simultane- 
ously two enterprises, war and revolution, was 
not there and could not be manufactured. Ger- 
many herself could not have done what Russia 
tried to do. The Revolution degenerated rapidly ; 
the problem of mutiny in the army, which insisted 
on demobilization, came to overshadow everything 
else. 



CHAPTER X 

SEMI-BOLSHEVISM: THE PLATFORM OP THE 
FRENCH SOCIALIST PARTY 

rp HE fundamental idea of Bolshevism as well 
-*■ as Lenin's practical program was recently 
summarized by him in the following description: 
"A dictatorship of the proletariat, coupled with 
a new democracy for the workers — civil war for 
a greater participation of the masses in politics." 1 

We must compliment the Bolshevist leader on 
one point: he expresses himself with a frankness 
and a clearness quite in contrast with the haziness 
prevailing today in the ideas of most European 
socialists. 

One ought to read the interesting "Question- 
naire on Bolshevism" conducted by L'Avenir 2 
of Paris. This magazine asks the best qualified 
militant socialists to answer a few queries, of 
which the first two are as follows : 

"Is the revolutionary transformation of the 
capitalist system into the socialist system possible 
at the present moment? If so, by what signs can 
this possibility be recognized, and in what does it 
consist? 

"Can revolutionary power do without demo- 
cratic sanction, and how?" 

1 N. Lenin, Letter to the Workingmen of America, p. 11. 

2 No. 37, p. 223, May, 1919. 

165 



166 LENIN 

The answers are not very instructive taken one 
by one; but in the mass, they are exceedingly in- 
teresting. 

"The Socialist Party," says Madame Louise 
Saumoneau, for instance — she was the first to 
answer the questionnaire, clipping a section from 
the "program of the Committee for the Kesump- 
tion of International Kelations," "strongly repu- 
diates any attempt to represent the Kevolution as 
premature and the proletariat as insufficiently pre- 
pared for the exercise of power. . . . Eevolution 
alone can bring about a rapid and complete solu- 
tion of the world's problems of social reconstruc- 
tion." 

That is what the Socialist Party, in whose name 
Madame Louise Saumoneau is speaking, thinks. 
But M. Andre Lebey, who belongs to the same 
party and whose answer comes immediately after 
hers, does not seem to share this opinion. His 
letter, indeed, says: "It is mad, criminal and ab- 
surd to say that 'the present duty of the prole- 
tariat is to take over power immediately.' You 
know as well as I do that the working class is still 
very badly educated. It is backward intellectually 
and in material resources. Only when capitalist 
society has attained its maximum development and 
has spread its benefits everywhere will an insur- 
rectionary movement, which cannot be 'ordered 
in advance,' perhaps become necessary." 3 

3 1 am, let me repeat, quoting only the first two answers. 
The others are no less contradictory. 



SEMI-BOLSHEVISM 167 

On the other hand, one may read the following 
in a recent pamphlet by M. Albert Thomas: "We 
nsed to dream," he said, "that the propertied 
classes who had increased their riches and power 
and who, even during the war, had partly compen- 
sated for war losses by new inventions and meth- 
ods, wonld preserve something of the new spirit 
that had come to animate them during the years 
1914-18, and would be ready to acknowledge that 
they were managing production not in their own 
interests solely, but in the interests of all. We 
hoped they would come to see that the manage- 
ment of capital is a social trusteeship held for 
the common good, and to look upon their em- 
ployees as equal partners in a public enterprise, 
entitled therefore to become parties in discussion 
and negotiation. Is this hope a delusion? Has a 
durable union, a union superior to all our selfish 
struggles, become impossible? I, for one, refuse 
to think so." 4 

Madame Saumoneau wants a revolution in 
France immediately. M. Lebey considers it a little 
premature; and M. Thomas does not want it at 
all. In the heart of the "united" Party there 
are three contrary or differing opinions on this 
rather important question. Which one expresses 
the official ideas of the Party? Should there be a 
revolution today, as Madame Saumoneau desires, 
or is it, on the other hand "mad, criminal and 
absurd," as M. Lebey insists? 

4 Albert Thomas, Bolshevism or Socialism, Berger-Le- 
vrault, 1919, pp. 13-14. 



168 LENIN 

To conciliate these two positions wonld seem to 
be a task beyond human power ; but the Extraor- 
dinary National Congress held in April, 1919, 
proved the opposite. It maintained the unity of 
the Party and "answered" the fatal question: 

"The Socialist Party declares more vehemently 
than ever, with a conviction increased by recent 
terrible lessons, that the goal for which it is aim- 
ing is * social revolution.' 

"Social revolution means nothing more nor less 
than the substitution of a collectivist regime of 
production, distribution, and exchange for the 
present economic regime, founded on capitalistic 
private property and corresponding to a period in 
history which is now out of date. 

"The future alone will show how this change, 
which is in itself the Eevolution, will take place — 
whether through a legal transfer of titles, or a 
pressure of universal suffrage, or an exercise of 
force on the part of the organized proletariat." 5 

That is what M. Leon Blum in his Comment on 
the Platform of the Socialist Party calls "facing 
problems directly, without hypocrisy, or uncer- 
tainty!" I trust I may be allowed to disagree 
with him. Those accustomed to call things by 
their right names will find mere word-juggling in 
the passage which I have just quoted. From the 
strictly formal point of view, the Platform is 
probably correct. There can be no doubt that 
the legal substitution of the new economic regime 

5 Policy and Platform of the Socialist Party, p. 6. 



SEMI-BOLSHEVISM 169 

for that of the present day may be called a social 
revolution. In the same sense one may speak of 
a "revolution" in chemistry, or a "revolution" 
in botany. Unfortunately, that is not the ques- 
tion. The question is how this transformation is 
to take place, whether by the "pressure of uni- 
versal suffrage," or by "the exercise of force on 
the part of the organized proletariat." And the 
Platform has no answer to make to this question 
except to say modestly: "the future alone will 
show;" while M. Blum in his Comment begs his 
colleagues "not to confuse method with aim." 

"What is the meaning of all this ? Here we have 
a world on fire; Europe perhaps at the point of 
death; a terrible experiment started by men in 
Moscow, who ask for nothing better than a chance 
to repeat it in Paris and London ; the people con- 
fused; tension in the masses extreme — and the 
French Socialist Party thinks that this is the pro- 
pitious time to say, with a tone of a prophet and 
a revealer, what has been said a thousand times 
before, that the final aim of socialism is the sub- 
stitution, etc., and that this substitution is called 
the Social Eevolution ! 

Has not the man in the street the right to say 
to the members of the Congress : 

"Gentlemen, no one asked you about that. "We 
knew that forty years ago. WTiat we want to 
know is whether you, like the men of Moscow, in- 
tend to organize a 'movement of force' in the near 



170 LENIN 

future and whether you are going to ask us to 
help you. That is what we want to know, because 
if there is going to be a barricade we must know 
on which side of it we are going to fight.' ' 

The " answer' ' is: "The proletariat cannot re- 
nounce any instrument of warfare in fighting for 
the attainment of political power." 

"Any instrument of warfare!" The machine- 
gun is an excellent instrument of warfare; and 
experience in Eussia (as Nicholas II and Lenin 
discovered) has demonstrated that with machine- 
guns a minority can impose its will on the majority 
for a considerable length of time. This sentence 
of the "Policy and Platform" must have pleased 
M. Alexandre Blanc who calls himself a Bolshe- 
vist. Perhaps that was the reason for its use. 
But must the French proletariat, can the French 
proletariat, do without universal suffrage, or even 
oppose universal suffrage, in order to gain polit- 
ical power ; or must it on the contrary wait until 
it becomes a majority? 

The "answer" to this is: "The Social Revolu- 
tion has no chance of being successful unless it 
occurs at the proper time, at a time, that is, when 
conditions are ripe for it in material concerns as 
well as in the mentality of the public. The Party 
has always discouraged the workers from attempt- 
ing movements that are premature and demon- 
strations that are impulsive." 

This time Andre Lebey and Albert Thomas 
must be satisfied, which is perhaps again what the 



SEMI-BOLSHEVISM 171 

Party leaders were aiming at. But the man in the 
street is still left in the dark : if he is not called 
on today, will he be called on tomorrow, and if 
not, when? 

"The Socialist Party is no more master of the 
moment for the revolution than it is of the form 
the revolution will take." 

But after all, on what do these things depend? 

"The form of proletarian Kevolution will de- 
pend, in the last analysis, on circumstances (!), 
especially on the nature of the resistance it meets 
in its efforts to gain deliverance. The Socialist 
Party would not shrink from seizing any oppor- 
tunity the mistakes of the bourgeoisie might 
give it." 

At any rate, the principle of universal suffrage 
is a "matter of circumstances" clearly. But not 
in the least clear is what the resistance of the 
bourgeoisie has to do with this case. Admitting 
that the principle is also a matter of circumstances 
to the bourgeoisie (as is doubtless the fact) and 
that the circumstances are such that the bourgeois 
think they are in a position to do without univer- 
sal suffrage, the question is not even raised as to 
whether the Socialist Party has a right to meet 
violence with violence. In this event, it is evident 
that the bourgeois will be the ones to bring about 
the revolution and that the socialists will have no 
say on the point. But so long as the suffrage is 
not in danger, will they, can they, should they, 
use force? That is the question. The man in the 



172 LENIN 

street is still waiting for the answer of the 
Congress. 

"The Socialist Party is not master of the mo- 
ment/' says the Platform. "How can we foresee 
what form the Bevolution will take!" asks M. 
Leon Brum. But whether the Party is master of 
the moment or not, whether it foresees the form of 
the Eevolntion or not, the question asked by 
L'Avenir must nevertheless be answered: is the 
present moment apt for instituting the collectivist 
regime of production, exchange and distribution, 
or is it not? If the answer is "no," the Party 
should say so frankly without thinking of the an- 
noyance it may cause Madame Louise Saumoneau 
or M. Alexandre Blanc. If the answer is "yes," 
it must say "yes" despite the sorrow M. Albert 
Thomas and M. Andre Lebey would probably feel. 
And it is equally necessary to answer the second 
question of L'Avenir as to whether the presump- 
tive Kevolution can do without ' ' democratic sanc- 
tion." Specific answers to these direct questions 
would be worth infinitely more than generalities 
on the final objectives of the Socialist Party or 
of socialism, which is — who would have believed 
it? — the substitution of one kind of ownership for 
another ! 

However, if the platform of the French Party 
says nothing about the chances of success the dif- 
ferent forms of social revolution have, M. Leon 
Blum lets fall a few very significant words on this 
subject which really deserves much better treat- 



SEMI-BOLSHEVISM 173 

ment. He says: "If, on the other han3 one — 
though not the most probable — of the hypotheses 
which we have had to consider should be realized, 
if the acquisition of power by the proletariat 
should be the result of a constitutional process 
whereby the socialists, under circumstances to be 
determined, should gain a majority in the parlia- 
ment of their country, and if they then should find 
themselves in a position to bring about what really 
amounts to revolution — a radical transformation, 
that is, in the status of property — well, in spite of 
the constitutional origin, in spite of the legal char- 
acter, of this transformation, it would be a rev- 
olution just the same !" The text of the Comment 
punctuates the conclusion of this rather involved 
sentence with the word "applause." I suppose 
this applause of the Congress was aroused par- 
ticularly by M. Blum's sensational and novel idea 
that the real objective of socialism is the trans- 
formation of property status and that the trans- 
formation contemplated amounts to Revolution! 
I cannot imagine it as a tribute to his judgment 
as to the probabilities of the hypotheses "we have 
had to consider!" It is incredible, nevertheless, 
that a question of this latter nature should, under 
present conditions in the world, be silently passed 
over in the Platform of a national Socialist Party 
and dealt with in a casual phrase of nine tvords 
in a Comment. The socialists have not as yet 
gained a majority in Parliament and in the coun- 
try. The French people, accordingly, and the 



174 LENIN 

proletariat especially, have a right to expect the 
Socialist Party to tell them unequivocally the pol- 
icy they are to be asked to support. 

The Platform is more concise in answering the 
no less exercising question of the "dictatorship 
of the proletariat.' ' It says: 

"Whatever the form the Revolution assumes, 
the passing of the proletariat into power will 
probably be followed by a period of dictatorship. ' 3 

The postulate is clear, and we can only congrat- 
ulate the French Socialist Party on having prof- 
ited so well by the wonderful lesson of the Eussian 
Revolution. The French Bolshevists who re- 
frained from adopting Bolshevist ideas until those 
ideas were thoroughly discredited, remind me, in 
their strategy, of those clever Egyptians, who 
kept as still as mice so long as the forces of Great 
Britain were absorbed in the Great War and post- 
poned revolting till after the defeat of Germany! 

"History clearly shows the meaning of this 
formula which is being so bitterly abused by the 
reactionaries today. History demonstrates be- 
yond question that a new regime, political or 
social, can never be established solely on the legal 
structure of the regime it is replacing. The rev- 
olutions of the 19th century succeeded or failed 
according as they did or did not observe this prin- 
iciple. The 'dictatorship of the proletariat ' is 
nothing but this transition between the old order 
which has been abolished and the new one which 
is coming into its own." 




SEMI-BOLSHEVISM 175 

And Mr. Blum's Comment continues: 

' ' When a new regime, — whether it be a new 
political, or a new social, system makes no dif- 
ference — has upset an existing order, it is con- 
demned to failure in advance if to justify its 
existence, it depends, at the beginning, on the 
political, economic or social institutions which it 
has overthrown. (Applause." . . . 

"Here we are dealing with a rule of profes- 
sional technique, one might say. Eevolutions 
have failed or succeeded according as they were 
or were not sparing of constitutional legality dur- 
ing the period lying between the old order and 
the new — the intermediate period of dictatorship, 
in other words ; which, when social revolution is 
involved, must be an impersonal dictatorship of 
the proletariat, just as at other times during other 
revolutions, it has been the dictatorship of Royal- 
ists, Bonapartists or Republicans. ' ' 

This argument of the Platform and its para- 
phrase in the Comment (or is the Platform the 
paraphrase of the Comment?) does not, to my 
mind, prove anything at all. "All the revolutions 
of the 19th century," says M. Blum, "succeeded 
or failed according as they did or did not have an 
intermediate period of dictatorship. ' ' I am very 
anxious to know how M. Blum classifies the rev- 
olutions of the 19th century and which he thinks 
were successful. But the author of the Comment 
does not choose to multiply illustrations ; he does 
not care to pose as "a history professor.'' He 



176 LENIN 

contents himself with one example, "the last of 
the revolutions which occurred in France — the 
substitution of the republican for the imperial 
regime in 1870-71. ' ' 

What, for instance, was the point of conflict 
between Gambetta on the one hand, and the rest 
of the Government of National Defense on the 
other! In the face of the approaching elections, 
an early date for which had been stipulated in 
the Armistice, Gambetta tried to set up a real dic- 
tatorship on a democratic basis. He insisted, for 
one thing, that former officials of the Empire be 
ineligible for election. That was not constitu- 
tional. "It makes no difference," answered Gam- 
betta. "I am exercising a dictatorship, and if I 
do not exercise it, the Eepublic and democracy 
will be lost." And indeed, two or three years 
later, because Gambetta had not been able to seize 
and hold the intermediate dictatorship of the Ee- 
public, "a reactionary Assembly was able to form 
a conspiracy for the restoration of the Monarchy. ' ' 

In the first place I do not know what this in- 
structive fragment means by its phrase "a dem- 
ocratic dictatorship." Did it represent anything 
but the omnipotence of universal suffrage? If, 
for instance, in accordance with the Constitution 
of the Third Eepublic, the princes of formerly 
reigning families were exiled from France, does 
it follow that the French people have been living 
under dictatorship for fifty years? But without 
stickling on such points, as I try to follow M. 




SEMI-BOLSHEVISM 177 

Blum's reasoning to the bottom and understand 
fully the historical example he cites, I find myself 
more and more perplexed. So then Gambetta 
"was not able to seize and hold the intermediate 
dictatorship.' ' And, since all the revolutions of 
the 19th century failed if they did not observe M. 
Blum's rule about an "intermediate period of dic- 
tatorship," I conclude that the Third Eepublic 
must have been overthrown and the Empire re- 
stored. However, things were not quite .so tragic 
as that. All that happened was "a reactionary 
Assembly forming a conspiracy to restore the 
Monarchy." That is literally all, and M. Blum's 
terrible rule is not so terrible as it seems. Accord- 
ing to his own statement, the Eevolution which 
established the Third Eepublic and which is un- 
deniably one of the most successful revolutions 
we have had in Europe — since the regime it estab- 
lished has lasted already a good half century — 
took place without the "intermediate period of 
dictatorship." If the other examples M. Blum 
might give in favor of his thesis are as convincing 
as this one, he is decidedly right in not choosing 
to pose as a "history professor." 

I will not go so far as to erect a general rule 
out of the opposite of the thesis of the Platform, 
namely that every revolution has been lost when 
it gives rise to a dictatorship. Eevolutions are 
phenomena far too complex to be made dependent 
upon any one condition which must itself be de- 
pendent on a thousand different factors of the 



178 LENIN 

most varied kind. Furthermore, as I have already 
suggested, it is very difficult to divide revolutions 
into two classes such as "successful" and "un- 
successful." I stop at the assertion that the idea 
of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" is not 
only one of the most dangerous, hut also one of 
the most incoherent, political ideas ever conceived. 

"The new order," M. Blum continues, "planned 
by the proletariat, will be established by a class, 
but in the interest and for the good of all men. 
Like the new juridical system it precedes and 
prepares, the impersonal dictatorship 6 if the pro- 
letariat is exercised in the name and in the interest 
of the whole of humanity" (or, at least, of the 
whole nation). 

This goes without saying ! Since Adam delved 
and Eve span, no dictatorship, personal or im- 
personal, has ever been exercised in this world 
save in the interest of the whole of humanity ! The 
frank and honest dictators (it is, after all, a mat- 
ter of frankness and honesty) have never denied 
this. "Take as your text the so-called 'general 
welfare,' " said Napoleon, "and you can go as far 
as you like." 

6 Georges Sorel wrote in 1907 : "In socialist literature 
there is frequent reference to a future dictatorship of the 
proletariat, about which they are not very fond of giving 
explanations. Sometimes this formula is improved by adding 
the epithet impersonal to qualify dictatorship but that does 
not clarify the situation very much." (Reflections on Vio- 
lence, p. 250.) It looks as if the authors of the Platform 
had exhumed this adjective on purpose to please M. Sorel, 
and so that he could have more than his usual fun with "the 
intellectuals who have taken up the profession of thinking 
for the proletariat!" 



SEMI-BOLSHEVISM 179 

"However, this period of transition must be as 
brief as circumstances permit. Its duration will 
vary according to economic conditions, the degree 
of preparation and organization of the proletariat, 
and the nature and intensity of the resistance 
met." 7 

Since we are here considering a dictatorship 
merely as opposed to a democracy based on uni- 
versal suffrage, we may ask how this dictatorship 
is to end of its own accord. If it suppresses itself 
as soon as "circumstances permit," what will it set 
up in its own stead? Anarchy? Universal suf- 
frage ? In this latter case can we hope for a com- 
plete reversal of public opinion — enlightened by 
the wonderful experiment successfully concluded 
by the proletariat — from despotism to democracy? 
I prefer not to be a history professor either; 
otherwise it would be very easy to show that no 
dictatorship, personal or impersonal — and the im- 
personal much less than the personal 8 — has ever 
prepared its subjects to be free citizens in a dem- 
ocratic state. All dictatorships have had just the 

7 Platform, p. 8. 

8 Cardinal Mazarin maintained rightly enough that people 
will put up with the absolutism of a king, even if it involves 
an extreme of tyranny ; but cannot stand that of ten thousand 
feudal lords, scattered all over the map, for any length of 
time. For this same reason the dictatorship of the hundred 
thousand Bolshevist commissars who are terrorizing Russia 
today is the most unbearable tyranny the country has ever 
known. It is much worse than the Old Regime; for the abso- 
lutism of the gendarmes was at least modified by a code 
of law. The situation would even be more abominable than 
it is if 99 per cent, of these commissars were not so readily 
to be bought off with money. In Russia today bribery is 
the sole surviving guaranty of individual freedom! 



180 LENIN 

opposite effect on public opinion. That is why no 
dictatorship has ever suppressed itself of its own 
accord. M. Blum might reply that the dictator- 
ship of the proletariat will, in this respect as in all 
others, be different from the dictatorships hith- 
erto known to history; and he will cite the cur- 
rent example of Moscow. Like many other Euro- 
pean socialists, M. Blum should have taken a trip 
to Eussia, 9 granted the Bolshevists would have 
let him in (which is very doubtful, for this cham- 
pion of theirs is in their eyes one of the "bour- 
geois hypocrites"). He would there have seen 
first hand what the Russian people think of the 
Bolshevists — and, accordingly, the unlikelihood of 
''circumstances ever allowing" Lenin to substi- 
tute universal suffrage for the "period of tran- 
sition." Of such a substitution — the "period of 
transition" has already lasted four years — Lenin 
is not even thinking. These observations, how- 
ever, are purely academic; we all know how dic- 
tatorships end in reality. And the regime of 
Lenin — although it satisfies M. Blum's formula 
absolutely (it would be hard indeed to find any- 
thing better in the way of dictatorship and a more 
"sparing use" of "constitutional legality") will 
not be an exception. 

9 1 see in M. Boussaton's answer to the investigation of 
L'Avenir (No. 38, p. 285) the sincere cry of a drowning 
man: "Russia might have thrown some light on the prob- 
lem; but it is practically impossible for us to find out what 
is going on there. . . . We need documents! As for the 
moral and humanitarian side of the matter, what are we 
to believe?" 



SEMI-BOLSHEVISM 181 

"The power of dictatorship during the period 
of transition must be exercised by the proletariat 
politically and economically organized. 

"True, in this respect, to its traditional tactics, 
the Socialist Party realizes that the political and 
economic organs of the workingmen must nor- 
mally determine the major lines of its policy." 

We find ourselves in darkness here again. 
What does "proletariat politically and econom- 
ically organized" really mean? Is it the C. G. T. 
(Confederation Generate du Travail) ; or is it 
merely the "Constitution of the Soviets," which 
has just been published jointly by the bookshops 
of the Socialist Party and by Humanitef In the 
latter case a few words should be added on the 
"poorest peasants," on the councils of deputies 
from the batrahs and the sredniaks, or even better, 
the Comitety Biednoty (Committees of the Indi- 
gent) to bring us up to the dernier cri in Moscow 
styles. 

It is very likely that an experiment with the 
Social Eevolution among the better educated 
Western peoples would not be very different from 
what we see in Russia. The world has just lived 
through five years of warfare which has peculiarly 
intensified all human instincts of hatred and de- 
struction. The very tone of controversy in the 
French newspapers (as in those of other coun- 
tries) is sufficient to cause some distrust as to 
the pacific character of a possible revolution in 



182 LENIN 

France. 10 All parties resort to the same vituper- 
ation, the same accusations of corruption and 
treason. Signs of moral and intellectual deterior- 
ation are evident in every country; and do not 
imagine that the Socialist Party is escaping this 
general taint. Two socialist deputies, MM. Basly 
and Cadot, recently introduced a bill in Parlia- 
ment demanding the death penalty (with execu- 
tion " within twenty-four hours") for monopolists, 
profiteers, and speculators; and two extremist 
papers approved the measure. ' ' That is sane re- 
publican tradition, ' ' says Humanite. ' ' During the 
Great Eevolution were not the profiteers of that 
day quickly collared and hoisted up the nearest 
lamp-post?" 11 

"Only ignorant people," says the Action Fran- 
gaise, on the other hand, "will be astonished to 
see the Royalists welcoming this timely resurrec- 
tion of the ' roasting bees' 12 and the ' hanging 
sprees' with which our kings kept the ' rabble' in 
order for some nine hundred years or more." 13 

Now, without sympathizing with profiteers, 
speculators, and monopolists, one might hope that 
a modern civilized government had other means 
of settling economic questions than the "neckwear 
of the Eevolution" and the chambres ardentes of 
our old kings. 

10 1 mention Franc© as one of the most civilized countries 
in the world. 

11 Humanite, July 11, 1919. 

12 The chambres ardentes, tribunals which condemned pris- 
oners to death by fire. 

13 L' Action Frangaise, July 11, 1919. 



SEMI-BOLSHEVISM 183 

Almost touching indeed is this flocking together 
of such differently feathered fowl as Royalist and 
Bolshevist, 14 yet here we find M. Daudet asking 
almost every day for the guillotine for M. Cail- 
laux; while M. Brotteau of the Populaire advo- 
cates a similar shampoo for Marshal Joffre's 
venerable head. 15 This is all journalistic fun- 
making, I am well aware. It would be idle to 
take such banter seriously in normal times. But 
let a revolution break out in France 16 and such 
jokes will turn, as they turned in Russia, to gal- 
lows, guillotines and — who can be sure — perhaps 
also to chambres ardentes! The Bolshevists have 
had theirs. . . ." 

But not only the moral condition of humanity 
today must be considered. The Platform of the 
French Socialist Party (which, in fact, does not 
take the moral condition into consideration at all) 
sets forth a list of circumstances "favorable to the 
success of the social revolution." I will mention 
only two of these: "first, the close unity of the 
International Socialist Party; second, material 
prosperity, especially in all that concerns stocks 
of raw materials, food stuffs, machinery, and 
means of transportation. ' ' The first of these con- 

14 Five years ago, in spite of "sane republican tradition," 
a socialist declaring himself in favor of the death penalty 
would have been expelled from the Party. 

is Populaire, July 12, 1919. 

""In time of revolution the class struggle has absolutely 
and inevitably always and everywhere taken form as civil 
war, and civil war is impossible without the most terrible 
destruction and the most bloody terror. ... (N. Lenin} 
Letter to the Workers of America, p. 7.) 



184 LENIN 

ditions, without being indispensable, is neverthe- 
less not without importance. The second seems 
to me to be absolutely necessary. Well, does the 
Socialist Party believe that these two prerequis- 
ites obtain today? Will not everyone agree with 
me that we are today infinitely farther away from 
their realization than we were before the war in 
1913, when the question of the Social Revolution 
had not as yet been raised by current events? 
Well then, would it not be better, instead of adopt- 
ing on this matter a sort of agnosticism hardly in 
keeping with the frank dogmatism of the Marxian 
faith, would it not be more honest also, to tell the 
French workers plainly that the "proletarian 
hour" will not strike tonight, nor even tomorrow 
morning ? 

It is true that to get free from this agnosticism 
in one way or another would mean a split in the 
famous "unity" (unity!) of the French Socialist 
Party. But would that "unity," I ask, be able to 
withstand the first crisis of the Eevolution (grant- 
ing that it survived up to the moment of the Rev- 
olution) ? The socialists of France owe a debt of 
gratitude to the French ministers, whose policies, 
good or bad, have kept them all united — Compere- 
Morel hobnobbing with Longuet, Thomas with 
Blanc, Lebey with Raffin-Dugens. 

Augustus Bebel, commenting on the policy of 
Jaures at the Amsterdam Socialist Congress, said : 
"After every vote in the French Parliament, we 
see the Jaurist group dividing into two or three 



SEMI-BOLSHEVISM 185 

factions. For anything similar one has to go to 
Germany to the most despised of the capitalistic 
parties, the National-Liberals. But today a por- 
tion of the proletarian party in France shows the 
same tendency. The effect is naturally to com- 
promise and demoralize the whole movement. ' m 
Since the crisis of war is now over and the crisis 
of revolution has not yet come in France, the 
French Socialist Party has hitherto but rarely 
shown the lamentable spectacle which Bebel con- 
demned. I do not know, however, whether the 
intellectual and moral prestige of the French 
"United" Party has been increased by the fact 
that on one side of its parliamentary group sits 
M. Blanc, who openly calls himself a Bolshevist, 
and on the other M. Thomas, who maintains no 
less openly that "to fight Bolshevism is not to 
betray socialism but on the contrary to serve it." 18 
In my opinion it would be more logical for each of 
them to keep to his own side of the house and 
leave the others alone, all the more since this 
wonderful "unity" is so ineffective in results. 
Though I hope very sincerely that the day may 
not come when the French socialists will see what 
the German, and we Russian, socialists have al- 
ready seen — a barricade rising in their own midst ! 

17 Bebel, Speech of August 19, 1904, at a full session of 
the Congress of Amsterdam. What would Bebel, who was 
then so severe with the French socialists, have said today at 
the spectacle presented by the German socialists? 

18 Albert Thomas, Bolshevism or Socialism, p. 7. 



CHAPTER XI 

THE SOCIALISM OF THE NEAR FUTURE: 
JEAN JAURES 

BECAUSE of his great talents, the inherent 
strength of his character, the integrity of his 
political and private life, the extent and depth of 
his knowledge (in which he equalled, if he did not 
surpass Karl Marx), and because of the clearness 
of his political thinking, Jean Jaures was one of 
the noblest men mankind has known. 

I will begin this chapter by stating one of the 
fundamental ideas of this book: that the motto 
of all the democratic leaders of our day must be 
"Back to Jaures." 

But "back" does not wholly express my mean- 
ing. In spite of the great influence and excep- 
tional prestige of the French "tribune," demo- 
cratic and socialist thought and policy have never 
been sufficiently imbued with his ideals. The past 
belongs to Marx; the present, "alas," seems to 
belong to Lenin; I have some hope that the future 
may belong to Jaures. 

"Some hope," I say. Unfortunately nothing 
today gives promise of any triumph, in the near 
future, of the "Jaures idea." Slandered by his 

186 



SOCIALISM OF THE NEAR FUTURE 187 

adversaries, frequently misrepresented by his 
friends, and honored by the men of Moscow, 
Jaures will perhaps have long to wait for the rec- 
ognition of his glory by all humanity. 

The fate of this man is doubly tragic : a fanatic 
assassinated him, and the Bolshevists erected a 
statue to his memory ! The paper which he edited 
with such great distinction for ten years gave an 
enthusiastic account of the ceremonies at the un- 
veiling of this monument in Moscow. It did not 
see in this tribute an insult to the memory of the 
great defender of human rights ; though the statue 
was set up two blocks away from the Lubianka, 
where the "Extraordinary Commission" tortures 
its prisoners, and barely a mile from Petrovsky 
Park, where " counter-revolutionist s" are shot 
without trial. 

Trotsky, it seems, made a beautiful speech at 
the unveiling ; he did not care for the methods of 
the French Tribune but he paid homage to the 
ability of the man. Let the proletariat of the 
world forgive Jaures for not having been a Bol- 
shevist — that was Trotsky's general tone. When 
Leo Tolstoi died, Nicholas II, who admired Tol- 
stoi's " ability" much as Trotsky admires the 
"ability" of Jaures, asked the Lord to be mer- 
ciful to that illustrious sinner. 1 Trotsky, praising 
Jaures with faint damns, makes a good twin for 
the Romanoff despot. 

When a famous "legal mistake" occurred in 

1 "May the Lord be a merciful judge to him !"— so Nicholas 
II, when Stolypin told him that Tolstoi was dead. 



188 LENIN 

France, the victim of which was neither a prole- 
tarian nor a socialist, Jaures devoted three years 
of his life to the cause of the millionaire officer 
against whom the injustice had been done. This 
fact alone ought to make his disciples go slow in 
setting him up today as a co-religionist and almost 
a friend of men who kill bourgeois because they 
are bourgeois and officers because they are of- 
ficers. 2 

Among those who for the last twenty years have 
been carrying on a real anti-militarist campaign, 
(anti-militarist in the sense in which the word was 
defined in the preface to this book), Jaures un- 
questionably did the most to denounce and foresee 
the terrible calamity of war. 

This is what he said in the Chamber of Deputies 
on April 7, 1895 : 

" Everywhere great colonial competition is 
going on, in which the source of wars between 
European peoples is revealed in its very naked- 
ness. Unrestrained rivalry between two groups 
of manufacturers or merchants may be enough to 
threaten the peace of all Europe. Well then, how 
do you expect that war between nations will not 
always be an immediate possibility? Will we not 
always be on the verge of war so long as human 
life is at bottom nothing but war and conflict in 

2 After the attempt upon the life of Lenin, 512 hostages, 
officers and bourgeois (the figures are the official statistics 
of the Bolshevists), were shot by order of the Soviet Govern- 
ment to avenge this act. How pleased Jaures would be to 
have such admirers! 



SOCIALISM OF THE NEAR FUTURE 189 

a society given over to disordered competitions, 
class antagonisms and political struggles, them- 
selves often nothing but social struggles in dis- 
guise 1 ' ' 

He reverted to the same thought three years 
later in the columns of La Petite Bepublique (Nov. 
17, 1898) : 

"If war breaks out, it will be a vast and terrible 
war. For the first time in history it will embrace 
all nations, all continents. Capitalistic expansion 
has made the whole earth a battlefield to be 
stained with the blood of men. The most terrible 
accusation that can be brought against capitalism 
is that it holds over humanity the permanent and 
ever more menacing threat of war. In proportion 
as the horizon of human possibility and promise 
widens, the dark cloud of war also spreads. It 
now darkens all the fields where men till the soil, 
all the cities where men trade and labor, and all 
the seas sailed by the ships of men. Humanity 
will escape from this obsession of slaughter and 
disaster only when it has substituted the prin- 
ciple of peace for the principle of war, a socialist 
order for capitalist disorder/ * 

And three years before his death (Dec 20, 1911), 
he again called up the same spectre before the 
eyes of an unbelieving Parliament : 

"We sometimes speak lightly of the possibility 
of such a terrible catastrophe; but we forget, 
gentlemen, that the war of tomorrow in the extent 
of its horror and the depths of the ruin it will 



190 LENIN 

cause will be something unheard of in the ex- 
perience of men. . . . 

"We are asked to think of a short war, to be 
settled by a few claps of thunder and a few flashes 
of lightning. Do not be deceived. It will be a 
long-drawn-out conflict, varied with tremendous 
shocks between the opposing forces, as tremen- 
dous as those which took place in Manchuria be- 
tween the Eussians and the Japanese. Human 
masses will ferment in sickness, distress and pain, 
and waste away under the ravages of an artillery 
fire unparalleled in violence. Fever will take hold 
upon the sick, trade will be paralyzed, factories 
shut down, and the oceans ' horizons once streaked 
with the smoke of steamships will return to the 
sinister unbroken solitude of former days. 

"Yes, it will be a terrible spectacle and one to 
arouse all human passions. Consider this matter 
well, gentlemen. Listen to the warning from a 
man who, passionately attached to the ideals of 
his party, is convinced that to get justice and peace 
among men, it is necessary to change the form of 
property; but who also believes that it will be the 
noble distinction of the movement to proceed 
along lines of peaceful evolution, without unchain- 
ing those destructive hatreds which have hitherto 
been part of the history of all great social move- 
ments. 

"But notice another thing: it is in time of for- 
eign war — the invasion of a Brunswick, followed, 
you remember, by the famous ' joumees de Sep- 



SOCIALISM OF THE NEAR FUTURE 191 

tembre' ; such a catastrophe as that of France in 
1870 or that of Russia in the conflict with Japan — 
that all the belligerent passions of a nation, con- 
centrating on the social question, are whipped by 
the very fact of war into extremes of violence; 
and that is why the conservatives ought, of all 
classes, to be the most interested in preserving 
peace, the rupture of which inevitably means the 
release of all the energies of social disorder.' ' 

But was it only the chauvinists, nationalists a 
la Deroulede — who sometimes talked lightly of 
the possibility of European war? Did not Jules 
Guesde, a very rabid Marxian who was often an- 
tagonistic to Jaures, formerly lay great hopes on 
a ' ' fertile war 1 ' ' Jaures settled his accounts with 
this strange internationalism as follows : 

" There is the same impotence, the same con- 
fusion in the foreign policy of Guesde. It goes 
without saying that he is definitely an internation- 
alist. From the very beginning he has fought the 
chauvinism of Deroulede and other 6 patriots,' and 
has marked the pitfalls into which this enthusiasm 
of belligerent charlatanism may lead the public 
mind. His internationalism, however, is not an 
internationalism of peace, which would allow the 
proletariat of Europe to acquire liberty in gen- 
eral and, through the latter, power, and so to con- 
centrate all mental, moral and material resources, 
wasted today either by war or by an armed peace, 
on the problems incident to the necessary change 
in the status of property. No, it is not from the 



192 LENIN 

regular growth of the proletariat nor from the 
progress of the democracies that he expects the 
deliverance of the wage-earners to come, but from 
deep commotions which will make the revolution- 
ary force gush forth as in a torrent from a rent 
earth — the greater the cataclysms therefore the 
more productive the results. But there is no 
greater cataclysm than the bloody conflicts of 
great peoples who already have in them the in- 
ward quiver of approaching social wars. For in 
such struggles, where the national organizations 
of world capitalism strike at and ruin each other, 
all the bonds which normally embarrass the rev- 
olutionary proletariat will fall away, and from 
the governmental and capitalistic husks of the 
nations torn asunder by the shock of war, the 
International of labor will burst into bloom. 

' ' "What a cataclysm, indeed, what a piece of luck 
for revolution, if by chance Kussia and England 
should hurl themselves against each other and 
destroy each other! Eussia, the hot-bed of abso- 
lutism, England, the hot-bed of capitalism! Both 
stifling the proletarian spirit in the world! Both 
obstacles in the pathway of Eevolution ! 

"According to Guesde, Eussia is not only a 
Cossack menace to the republican or constitutional 
liberties of the "West. By forcing Germany, her 
immediate neighbor, to be continually on tiptoe, 
Eussia to some degree justifies German military 
imperialism — the guardian of Germanic inde- 
pendence; and the German proletariat itself hes- 



SOCIALISM OF THE NEAR FUTURE 193 

itates to make an attack on the Empire for fear 
that, in all the risks of a terrible civil war, Czarism 
will intervene to make of Germany another Poland. 
England also is a drag on the international pro- 
letariat; because, having to some degree allowed 
her workers to share in the benefits of her eco- 
nomic conquest of the world, she keeps them sta- 
tionary in a mood of conservatism or timid reform. 
The downfall of czarism would liberate the so- 
cialist democracy of Germany; the downfall of 
English capitalism would throw the proletariat of 
England into the universal revolutionary move- 
ment. That is why Guesde hailed the strained re- 
lations which developed in 1885 between Kussia 
and England over Afghanistan, and glorified war 
as a harbinger of blessings. 

" 'Far from being a black cloud in the revolu- 
tionary sky, that gigantic duel which the govern- 
ments of Europe in gloomy foreboding see ap- 
proaching, is all to the good for western socialism, 
no matter which of those two "civilizing" states 
comes out of the fight disabled. It would be even 
better if both of them were wounded unto death. 

" 'A Kussia crushed in Central Asia means the 
end of czarism, which managed to survive the 
assassination of a czar but could not possibly with- 
stand the collapse of the military power on which 
it leans and with which it is interchangeable. The 
aristocratic and bourgeois classes, too cowardly 
to act of their own accord, and hitherto inclined 



194. LENIN 

to let nihilist bombs explode in vain, will suddenly 
find themselves swept into power in a government 
now constitutionalized, now parliamentarized, 
now Westernized. And the first and inevitable 
effect of this political revolution in St. Petersburg 
will be the liberation of the laboring classes in 
Germany. Freed from the Moscow nightmare, 
sure of no longer finding the Cossacks of an Alex- 
ander behind the dragoons of a Wilhelm, the so- 
cialist democracy of Germany will be in a position 
to dance the revolutionary festival, the proletarian 
"89 " on the ruins of the empire of blood and steel. 
Meanwhile, and even before the defeat itself — 
as the czarist papers themselves are obliged to 
confess — the bankruptcy of Eussia will shake the 
foundation of the whole capitalist world. 

6 ' ' Hurrah for war then ! Lo, the last ' ' dangers' ' 
of peace have disappeared ! Destiny is now to be 
fulfilled! In a few days, in a few weeks at the 
latest, the militarism of Moscow and the com- 
mercialism of England will be at each other's 
throats; . . . and may the outcome be the final 
downfall not of one but of both contenders.' " 3 

With all the respect due the character and in- 
tegrity of M. Jules Guesde, it must be said that 
in all this rhapsody he played a bad trick on him- 
self as well as on socialism. It is not only the fact 
that thirty years later M. Guesde became minister 
(I would be the last, certainly, to blame him for 

3 Charles Rappoport, Jean Jaures, second edition, 1916, pp. 
369-371. I have taken the quotations of Jaures from this 
book. 



SOCIALISM OF THE NEAR FUTURE 195 

that) in the coalition cabinet of the Union Sacree 
and of "national defense," formed to carry on 
the war in which France f ought side by side with 
the "militarism of Moscow" and "the commer- 
cialism of England" against the military imperial- 
ism of Germany, the "guardian of German inde- 
pendence" (phrases of M. Guesde which are word 
for word the theme of the manifesto of the 93 
German scholars and of the reactionary press of 
the other side of the Khine all through the war). 
This is a purely personal matter. But everything 
else in the passage I have just quoted is of equal 
soundness, beginning with the false prophecy that 
"in a few days, in a few weeks at the latest, the 
militarism of Moscow and the commercialism of 
England will be at each other's throats," and end- 
ing with the moral position in which socialism is 
left as compared with "monarchism, opportunism 
and radicalism" — the latter crying "disaster" 
at the advance of the terrible spectre of conflict; 
while the former, in joyful expectation of the 
"revolutionary dance," "hurrahs for war," and 
declares with satisfaction that "the 'last dangers' 
of peace have disappeared!" 

The worst enemy of socialism could not have 
given it a blacker eye. Fortunately passages of 
this nature are rare in socialist literature. But 
it must be admitted that in the writings of Marx 
and Engels, and especially in their private cor- 
respondence, a few paragraphs are animated with 
the same spirit — M. Jules Guesde, moreover, is 



196 LENIN 

one of the purest Marxians. The "masters" also 
from time to time wistfully contemplated the 
world cataclysm, either in the interest of national 
causes or in that of the " revolutionary dance." 

Lenin expressly recognized that there was some 
truth in all this for certain classes of wars; and 
declared himself to be of Marx's opinion. "The* 
wars of former days," he wrote in one of his 
articles in 1915 4 "were the continuation of bour- 
geois movements to free nations from foreign 
yokes or from Turkish and Eussian absolutism.. 
No question then interested socialism except aa 
to whether the success of one of the two bour- 
geoisies in the struggle was preferable to that of 
the other; and the Marxists were able to rouse 
people in advance to wars of this nature by re- 
kindling national hatreds, just as Marx did in 
1848, and later on against Eussia ; and as Engels 
in 1859 spurred the Germans against their op- 
pressors, Napoleon III and Eussian czarism." On 
the other hand Lenin retorted to Gardenin, who 
was pointing to what he very justly called the 
"reactionary chauvinism" of Marx in 1848: "We 
Marxians are, and always have been, in favor of 
revolutionary war against counter-revolutionary 
states." Lenin and Zinoviev 5 based all their 

4 N. Lenin, "The Failure of the Second International," in 
The Communist, No. 1-29 (1915). 

5 G. Zinoviev, "On Maraudism," in The Social-Democrat* 
No. 39 (1915). 



SOCIALISM OF THE NEAR FUTURE 197 

Swiss propaganda on the recognition of a differ- 
ence in principle between the "imperialistic" war 
of 1914-18 and the "wars of national indepen- 
dence" of former days, notably, for instance, that 
of 1870, which, "by bringing about the unification 
of Germany fulfilled a very important and his- 
torically progressive mission" (Zinoviev). 6 

The absurdity of this method of reasoning is 
strikingly obvious, I think. If there are such 
things as "progressive wars," the war of 1914-18 
which liberated Poland, Czecho-Slovakia, and 
Jugo-Slavia, was without a shadow of doubt much 
more so than the war of 1870 which did not lib- 
erate anything but reduced Alsace to slavery. 
The militarism of William II was more dangerous 
than that of Napoleon III ; and Clemenceau, Lloyd 
George, and Wilson, are certainly much less reac- 
tionary than Bismarck. 

This line of thinking is entirely foreign to 
Jaures. He does not believe in wars of any kind, 
and he takes little stock in the gaiety of the "rev- 
olutionary dance ' ' which is to come out of a world 
conflict. Moreover, he never tried (as Engels 
did) to arouse patriotic hatreds even against op- 
pressors. He never hurrahed for war with M. 

6 It would be very interesting to know what those French 
socialists who are flirting with Bolshevism think of this "dif- 
ference in principle" between the wars of 1914 and 1870; 
and whether they regard the war of 1870 as really an "his- 
torically progressive" movement. 



198 LENIN 

Jules Gnesde. In this respect also the system of 
Jaures is on a higher plane than Marxism. 7 

"A European war can bring the Kevohrtion on. 
The controlling classes would do well to remember 
that. But such a war might also, and over a long 
period of time, provoke crises of counter-revolu- 
tion, rabid reaction, and exasperated nationalism. 
It might result in crushing dictatorships, mon- 
strous militarisms, and a long chain of retrograde 
violences, meanly motivated hatreds, vindictive 
reprisals, and degrading slaveries. We, for our 
part, refuse to take a hand in this barbaric game 
of chance. We refuse to risk, on one throw of 
such blood-stained dice, the certainty that our 
workingmen will some day be free, the certainty 

7 I may say in passing that Jaures was duly appreciative 
of the remarkable gifts and powerful intelligence of Karl 
Marx. I do not think, however, that the moral and intel- 
lectual personality of this great fighter ever really appealed 
to him. M. Paul Boncour writes in his reminiscences of 
Jaures: "I found him reading the correspondence of Marx 
and Engels. Jaures often 'brushed up' in these sources of 
socialist doctrine. With that perfect good faith which seemed 
always to give him the freshness of spirit of a child, he said 
to me, fingering the heavy pages : 'How wrapped up in their 
blessed "doctrine" these fellows were, inflexible in their an- 
tipathies, indifferent to everything outside^ their own fights 
of the moment ! I often wonder whether it is not a weakness, 
whether it does not diminish the fighting ability of a militant 
to try, as I am always trying, to understand the ideas of 
other people, and open up to so many other emotions not 
strictly pertinent to the political and social struggle itself/ " 
Indeed, therein lies the great difference between the natures 
of Marx and Jaures; the author of Das Kapital had a very 
vast knowledge ; but his emotions were aroused only by social 
and political combat, and then only so far as his personal 
ideas and the bearing of events upon them were concerned. 
In this respect Lenin is much nearer to Marx than Jaures 
was. Lenin can see and think of nothing except Bolshevism. 



SOCIALISM OF THE NEAR FUTURE 199 

of honorable independence, under a European 
democracy, which the future holds in reserve for 
all peoples, and all groups of people, despite and 
beyond all divisions, and dismemberments." 8 

These words of a great orator are words also 
of a prophet. And yet Jaures always trusted that 
humanity would be spared the World War. "Such 
a thing would be too stupid!" he would say, 
6 'therefore it will not be." "Such a thing would 
be too stupid; therefore it is sure to be!" would 
have been the reasoning of a Schopenhauer. 
"Jaures," says Anatole France, 9 "knew very well 
that the war would help his party ; but he did not 
want to purchase victory for the ideals closest to 
his heart at such a price." 

A reservation is in point here. The war did 
help socialism, in that it developed among the 
masses a hatred for the governments which 
brought it about; but it also worked against so- 
cialism and in a much more important way, by 
destroying the moral and economic foundations 
on which socialism must rest. It was in anticipa- 
tion and appreciation of this that Jaures made so 
many efforts to fight off and forestall war. He 
was only too right. He did not succeed. And 
death was the reward of his efforts. "He suffered 
this fate," Anatole France nobly says, "that his 

8 Jaures, The July (1915) Conference on Militarism (pub- 
lished by Vorwarts and quoted in M. Charles Rappoport's 
book on Jaures). 

9 Anatole France, "Jaures" in Humanite, March 26, 1919. 



200 LENIN 

soul, which was as beautiful as peace, should die 
with the death of peace. ' ' 

People commonly speak of three phases in the 
political career of Jaures as a socialist: he was 
regarded as a " revolutionary" during the years 
1893 to 1898, from the time he joined the Socialist 
Party up to the coming into power of the Waldeck- 
Eousseau-Millerand ministry; as an " opportu- 
nist," a "reformist," from 1898 to 1904, up to the 
Congress of Amsterdam; and thereafter as a " rev- 
olutionary" again, during the period of "unified" 
socialism, in which the war outbreak — and death 
— found him. 

This analysis into periods and changes of policy 
is sound so long as the merely external affiliations 
of the great French orator are concerned. But 
the doctrine, the system of thought, of Jaures, 
presents much greater unity. In this respect his 
tendencies, even as a mere youth when he sat in 
Parliament in the Centre and supported the policy 
of Jules Ferry, do not differ greatly from his 
more mature thinking. He certainly had a right 
to claim as he did claim: 10 "I have always been a 
republican and a socialist: the social Eepublic, 
the Eepublic of organized and sovereign Labor, 
has always been my idea. For it I have always 
fought from the very beginning even with all my 
inexperience and ignorance as a boy. 

10 Jean Jaures, Discours parlementaires, 1904. 



SOCIALISM OF THE NEAR FUTURE 201 

"Just as I am falsely said to have abandoned 
the doctrine and platform of the Left Centre for 
the doctrine and platform of socialism, so it is 
falsely alleged that in the years from 1893 to 1898 
I advocated a method of violent revolution and 
frequented extremist republican circles, only to 
adopt later on an attenuated 'reformism,' and 
revolution at a lagging evolutionary pace. To be 
sure, in the enthusiasms of the first great socialist 
successes in 1893, I sometimes nursed the illusion 
of a complete, immediate, and almost too easy, 
victory for our ideals. And in the heat of struggle 
against the systematically reactionary ministries 
which defied us, threatened us, tried to cast us 
out of the body politic of the Republic, outlaw us, 
ex-communicate us from national life, I did appeal 
to the great forces of the proletariat ; as I would 
again tomorrow, if the authorities tried to prevent 
the free, legal evolution of collectivism, the order- 
ly redemption of the working class. But in all 
my speeches in that time of storm — the bitter 
emotions of it I can still feel — the essentials of 
our socialist policies of today can easily be recog- 
nized: the same fundamental anxiety to unite so- 
cialism with real love of country, to complete 
democracy in politics by democracy in life; the 
same reliance on the power of the law, if only that 
law be not abused by the recklessness of reaction- 
ary parties or deformed by class treachery.' 9 

All of Jaures is there, all the great lesson of 



202 LENIN 

Ms theory and practice : social democracy as the 
logical and necessary result of political -democ- 
racy; progressive reform where opportunity is 
given for the free clash of ideas before a public 
opinion which decides; threat of violent revolu- 
tion where that opportunity is threatened; rev- 
olution itself where it is denied. 

To this program, political thought of today, 
though enriched by the great experience of 1914- 
19, cannot add a single word. It is the program 
of today. It is the program also of tomorrow. 

In 1904, Jaures was beaten at Eheims and Am- 
sterdam by the combined efforts of Jules Guesde, 
Vaillant, Bebel and Kautsky. On what question? 
On the question as to whether socialists should 
work in cabinets with bourgeois ministers. Very 
well ! In 1915, Jules Guesde became a minister as 
the colleague of Briand, Kibot and Denys Cochin, 
and Vaillant encouraged him in doing so; as for 
the German non-compromisers, Bebel, if he were 
alive, would surely be Chancellor of State today, 
if not President of the German Eepublic ; and M. 
Kautsky, though maintaining a critical reserve, 
is at present a fairly cordial supporter of the 
ministry, and is even in a receptive mood for a 
portfolio itself. 

Events have shown that the non-participation 
of the socialists in power is not a question of prin- 
ciple nor a symbol of party faith; but a question 
of pure tactic, depending exclusively on political 
circumstances. Jaures, perhaps, made a tactical 



SOCIALISM OF THE NEAR FUTURE 203 

error in defending the entrance of M. Millerand, 
a socialist at that time, into the Waldeck-Rous- 
seau-Galliffet cabinet. But on the principle at 
issne, he was undoubtedly right. 

The attitude of Jaures on the Dreyfus case — 
the second question of policy which then separated 
him from Jules Guesde and Vaillant, does not 
give rise to any question at all in our time. The 
well-known phrase, "James saved the honor of 
French socialism by his position on the Affaire" 
is generally recognized as true today. Moreover, 
since Jules Guesde has since served as minister in 
a war cabinet, all the attacks he made against 
Jaures for supporting the cause of a professional 
military officer u have peculiarly lost their point. 

11 "Here is, we are told, a special victim who has the right 
to a special campaign on our part in his behalf and a deliv- 
erance at our hands which would constitute an exceptional 
case in socialist polity. This victim is a member of the 
ruling class, a staff captain. Rich in his youth, through 
the robbery of laborers exploited by his parents, and free to 
become a useful man, free to put the knowledge he owes to 
his millions to the benefit of humanity, he nevertheless chose 
what he calls a military career. He said: T will use my 
splendid education, my unusual intellectual training, to 
slaughter my fellowmen.' Interesting, this victim, isn't he! 
(Loud Applause.) Oh, I understand very well that you 
workingmen, you peasants, who are taken away from the 
factory and the plow, put into a uniform and given a gun, 
under the pretense that you are needed to defend your coun- 
try, have the right, the duty even, to cry out to us, the 
organized proletariat, when you fall foul of this terrible 
military justice! You are not in the barracks of your own 
free will. You have never voluntarily accepted either the 
military rules, or the military organization of the so-called 
military justice, which you put up with. But he knew what 
he was doing when he chose the career of arms; he deliber- 
ately entered on this path, upholding the courtsTmartial so 
long as he thought that they would bear only on the poor 
man ; and that he would some day be the commanding officer 



204 LENIN 

In addition to these two questions of tactic, 
however, there were two points of theory in dis- 
pute between the camps of Jaures and Guesde 
which have not lost any of their interest since 
that time. I say two points, though they are 
really reducible to one : the class struggle and the 
revolution. 

A misunderstanding exists to the disadvantage 
of reformist socialism, to which "reformists" 
themselves have often contributed: it has to do 
with their notion of the class struggle. People 
have preferred to think that the difference between 
the revolutionists and the reformists lay in the 
fact that the former recognized, while the latter 
did not recognize, the "class struggle." The mis- 
understanding -arises, as is often the case, in the 
ambiguity and nature of the word "recognize." 
To my mind the question has no meaning whatso- 
ever. 

The class struggle is a fact which no man in his 

who would set the wheels of that blind, secret and merciless 
justice into motion against the poor man! Such is the 
victim in whose behalf they are trying to mobilize all the 
forces of the socialists and of the proletariat!" (Jules 
Guesde, speech at the Lille Hippodrome.) 

I have quoted this long passage in extenso because it is a 
fine example of all the elements of sectarian socialism which 
Lenin himself would not disclaim — easy and eloquent dema- 
gogy* an appeal to the instincts of hatred, coupled with an 
extremely simple scheme of thought. Fate has cruelly pun- 
ished M. Jules Guesde, a sincere and conscientious man, by 
making him "under the pretence that he was needed to defend 
his country," work in 1914-15 in collaboration with these mis- 
erable "commanding officers." He was able to see that life 
is much too complicated for sectarian formulas to simplify. 
How superior is the great and noble farsightedness of Jaures 
to this narrow and blind ritualism. 



SOCIALISM OF THE NEAR FUTURE 205 

senses can help perceiving. One may build exag- 
gerated hopes on this fact, as the Marxists do. 
It may be deplored, as, for instance, Christians 
deplore it. But the fact itself cannot be denied. 
Harmonious cooperation of the classes today is 
as a general rule not a reality but a utopia. The 
Eussian Eevolution has shown that the bourgeois 
are nearly always as " maximalist" in their desid- 
erata as the proletariat: one side wants to get 
everything, the other wants to yield nothing. A 
glaring example of bourgeois stupidity, and bour- 
geois "maximalism" I witnessed in the Ukraine, 
after the Germans had driven out the Bolshevists 
and put General Skoropadsky in control. As for 
the stupidity, bankers, manufacturers, and land- 
owners all seemed to believe 12 in the stability of 
the hated regime — a Cossack general supported 
by a foreign army! And as for the " maximal- 
ism,' ' the temporary majority seized its chance to 
take vengeance on the workers and peasants for 
all the insults it had suffered during the short 
period of Bolshevism. Today, of course, the tables 
have been turned exactly. Dragonnades of land- 
owners alternate with peasant jacqueries. But 
can one blame the illiterate peasants and work- 

12 With the majority it was an unshaken, almost religious 
faith — I can say that as an eye-witness. Business paper 
and securities leapt at once to dizzy altitudes, and yet there 
were hardly any sellers ; everyone wanted to buy or else was 
waiting for a still higher rise before selling. A few months 
later the debacle occurred — semi-Bolshevism under Petlioura, 
Bolshevism under Rakovsky, and finally ultra-Bolshevism 
under Grigorief. Many wealthy people lost their entire for- 
tunes in the crash, to say nothing of those who lost their lives ! 



206 LENIN 

ingmen for not being more intelligent and less 
"maximalist" than the educated people of money? 
I grant you that the Russian bourgeoisie, from a 
political point of view, is the least intelligent in 
the whole of Europe ! 

This lesson may not have been absolutely in 
vain. Harmonious cooperation between mutually 
tolerant classes is and will long remain a Utopia ; 
but it has not been proved that the class struggle 
must necessarily overstep the limits of pacific elec- 
toral and parliamentary contest. The revolution 
cost the bourgeois too much for them lightheart- 
edly to oppose universal suffrage (though some of 
their spokesmen are undoubtedly anxious to bring 
them to this). There is, therefore, reason to hope 
that universal suffrage will be recognized by both 
camps as the pivot of the future struggle. 

This was, I believe, the general idea of Jaures. 
Isolated sentences of the great French tribune 
may doubtless be quoted to the contrary. Jaures 
was a man of extraordinary activity. He wrote a 
great deal and lectured even more. He acknowl- 
edged himself that he often had to write and talk 
with no chance for a careful weighing of words. 
It would therefore be unfair to judge his doctrine 
by occasional remarks escaping him in the heat of 
debate. Sentences of an extremism which, if I 
dare say so, is a little too ready, are also found in 
his historical studies. I am not very fond of some 
pages in his "History of the French Revolution." 
That book is, of course, a prodigious work of labor 



SOCIALISM OF THE NEAR FUTURE 207 

and learning, of admirable eloquence always, not 
without finesse and irony here and there. It is also 
a fairly impartial work, in spite of its frank title 
as a "socialist" history. But I do not like Jaures 
as a "Montagnard" any more than I like Anatole 
France as a "comrade." I do not like the ven- 
eration Jaures shows for Danton, with whom he 
had nothing in common except eloquence (but how 
different the Attic eloquence of Jaures from the 
demagogy of Danton!). I do not like to see this 
"Dreyfusard" sitting in stern judgment on the 
Girondins who, " at a time when the revolutionary 
mind needed complete serenity, unity and enthu- 
siasm, brought on those unintelligible 'Septem- 
ber days/ during which the responsibility of 
parties and individuals is almost impossible to 
determine." 

Moreover obiter dicta of this kind have never 
fooled those who honestly and in good faith were 
seeking for the true doctrine of Jaures. M. Charles 
Eappoport, who is neither a reformist nor a mod- 
erate, in a very authoritative and conscientious 
book devoted to the famous orator, speaks of "his 
concept of things as organically reformist," in the 
period after, as well as in the period before, the 
Congress of Amsterdam; 13 and he calls Jaures 
a "Prometheus of evolution." 

13 Charles Rappoport, I.e., pp. 59 and 372. The admiration 
which he has for Jaures does not prevent M. Rappoport today 
from considering the Social Revolution as the one beneficent 
panacea (see his article in the Journal du Peuple, for July 
30. 1919). 



208 LENIN 



Let Jaures speak for himself, however : 

6 ' The revolution of the future must proceed by 
enlightened and legal methods. The organization 
of the proletariat as a class party does not in any 
way imply recourse to violence. There is nothing 
in it incompatible with the idea of evolution and 
a constitutional policy of universal suffrage. The 
proletariat knows that by using violence it is mak- 
ing things harder by sowing the seeds of panic. 

"Nothing good can be expected from convul- 
sions which shake society to its very foundations. 
After a few lamentable totterings things would 
return to their present, or something approaching 
their present, equilibrium. The proletariat will 
come into power not through some lucky turn of 
events in a political turmoil, but through the legal 
and methodical consolidation of its own forces. 

"More than that, even if a sudden coup is suc- 
cessful, its success will not be an enduring one. 
It will have no morrow of promise. There are 
small property holders even in the villages; and 
if a minority should for a minute abolish that 
property, nuclei of resistance would form every- 
where. Only through delicately and accurately 
planned transactions in which the interests of 
small holders are fully safeguarded, will the latter 
submit to a change from a capitalistic to a social- 
istic status; and transactions and guarantees of 
such intricacy can be made only after the calmest 
deliberation and through the legally expressed 
will of the majority of the people in a country. 



SOCIALISM OF THE NEAR FUTURE 209 

"Quite apart from convulsive crises which can- 
not be foreseen before they occur, nor controlled 
after they have occurred, there is only one sov- 
ereign tactic for socialism today: the legal con- 
quest of a majority. The revolutionary appeal 
to force can be only a great deception for the 
workingman of our time." 

It is a pity the Bolshevists did not carve these 
words of Jaures on the statue they erected to him 
at Moscow. 



CHAPTEE XII 

THEORIES THAT ARE DEAD AND IDEAS THAT 

ENDURE 

POLITICAL theorists must today apply them- 
selves to disengaging from a tangle of data 
the great lessons of these last five years, the most 
extraordinary years in human history. On the 
benefits it will derive from these lessons the future 
of mankind depends. 

The truth very rarely issues from the clash of 
conflicting opinions; and almost never from the 
clash of political opinions. But the clash of events 
is the very best of teachers for the few who sin- 
cerely and hopefully search for the truth in them. 
The only trouble with this method of learning is 
that it costs so much. 

The time in which we live will certainly be con- 
sidered a period of crises by future historians. 
Vico would without any hesitation have placed it 
in his category of "critical periods'' and as a 
model specimen of such. No general idea of life, 
no political theory, no social institution, but has 
been more or less shaken by the terrible ordeal 
of 1914-19. Some have been destroyed, or at least 
eliminated from European life, I will not say for- 
ever (forever is a word that should be banished 

210 



THEORIES AND IDEAS 211 

from sociology), but for a very long time at any 
rate. 

Absolutism, in the first place, seems to be in this 
latter group, the despotic and medieval abso- 
lutism of the Nicholas II type, as well as the "en- 
lightened" and modern absolutism of the William 
II variety. Absolutism, as a political idea, is 
dead. It seems quite unable to find rational de- 
fenders. The Bonalds, the Stahls, the de Maistres, 
the Pobiedonostsevs, have had their day. Their 
spiritual descendants dare go no farther back- 
ward than English constitutionalism. The divine 
right is no longer fashionable in Europe. To make 
it at all palatable, it must be seasoned with a 
certain amount of democracy. The near future 
will show whether even this mixture has much 
appeal for the generations now rising. 

Other evil political ideas have been more for- 
tunate. For some of them the issue is still far 
from decided. It is hard to establish with cer- 
tainty just the amount of stability there is in that 
idol which bears the vague name of imperialism. 
No other word was more discredited in the minds 
of the masses during the five years of the war; 
no other idea gave more convincing proofs of its 
vitality. The imperialism of Germany on the one 
side and that of the Entente on the other were 
violently stigmatized, only to end in the treaties 
of Brest-Litovsk and Versailles. Fate thought 
best to give an hour of decisive victory to each of 
the parties in the conflict ; and both showed their 



212 LENIN 

hands. But great as is the power of words (and 
of hypocrisy) in this best of all possible worlds, 
the time will come when the idol of imperialism 
will be either universally worshipped or else 
broken into bits. Of the two alternatives the 
second is the more likely to come true. There is 
nothing, however, to prove that this will be so. 
Is war, the chief corollary of imperialism, a dead 
idea 1 Theoretically, yes. Victory is a dangerous 
will-of-the-wisp. That we see clearly enough to- 
day. All the belligerent nations were conquered 
and ruined, Germany a little more, France a little 
less. And yet who would risk asserting that this 
war has been the last ? 

And third, capitalism. There have been social- 
ists, even many socialists, who failed quite to per- 
ceive the power and flexibility of the present 
economic regime. So much used to be said about 
its "intrinsic incoherence" that people ended by 
believing it incapable of resisting any serious test. 
Moreover, the ordeal when it came was more ter- 
rible and more severe than could ever have been 
foreseen. What did it all show? 

It showed, without doubt, the moral and intel- 
lectual bankruptcy of our proud civilization; but 
that very civilization, quite as much as its bank- 
ruptcy, is to be attributed to the capitalist regime. 
Alas, it would be more just to call it the bank- 
ruptcy of humanity; for in the eyes of idealists 
and of optimists who thought men good and beau- 
tiful, humanity has undeniably failed, revealed 



THEORIES AND IDEAS 213 

itself as something ugly, something miserably 
ugly! 

But we can ignore the moral and intellectual 
side of the question. What about the power, the 
stability, of the present economic system? There 
is no doubt as to the answer here. We must rec- 
ognize that capitalism has shown itself more 
stable, and infinitely more flexible, than its sup- 
porters — let alone its adversaries — believed. The 
capitalist system was able, without breaking down, 
to survive the great catastrophe which befell it, 
and which, partially at least and with no vital 
necessity, it also provoked. And it was able to 
do this, because it was sufficiently versatile to 
adapt itself to new circumstances, to transform 
itself artfully, audaciously, and with bewildering 
rapidity, of all which the German Kreigs-social- 
ismus gave the most striking example. 1 It had 
to do so. But for the heroic device of socializing 
its capitalism, no country would have been able 
to withstand the war. Had blockaded Germany 
kept to the old system of the "free play of eco- 
nomic forces," she would have been destroyed in 
a few weeks. But it was also a very grave crisis 
for capitalism. The enemies of capitalism were 
won over to follow its example, which for that 
matter, they were unprepared or unable to follow. 
Eathenau has a disciple by the name of Lenin, 2 

1 On the seventh day after the outbreak of war Germany 
already had her central committee of industry. 

2 In 1917 Lenin gave a lecture in Switzerland which showed 
how much he was impressed by the practical success of Ger- 
man military socialism. 



214 LENIN 

though the disciple proves to be much less adroit 
than the master. 

The fatal hour of pure capitalism like that of 
pure divine right was called on August 1, 1914. 
The hour of amalgamations has begun. On the 
whole, socialized capitalism is less illogical than 
the mixture of divine right with parliamen- 
tarianism. 

In the fourth place, what became of the prin- 
ciples of democracy? Much has been said recently 
about a crisis in democratic theory. The experi- 
ence of the terrible years just past has revealed 
the extreme instability and flightiness of conviction 
in the masses. Russia has given the most elo- 
quent proof of this. Military chauvinism in 1914 ; 
a few days of patriotic and libertarian ecstasy in 
March, 1917 ; pacifism of a Bolshevist hue towards 
the end of that same year; complete prostration 
today — such are the stages through which Russian 
mentality passed in a very short space of time. 
Elections based on universal suffrage and taking 
place at yearly intervals would have given the 
most disparate results in Russia. In other coun- 
tries these contradictions have been less manifest. 
A very marked psychological change is neverthe- 
less to be seen everywhere. Just compare the 
German (or American) newspapers of 1914, with 
those of 1917, and those of 1919. The socialist 
organs, like the socialist rank-and-file, have under- 
gone a similar evolution. Vorwarts (or Human-. 



THEORIES AND IDEAS 215 

ite) talks an entirely different language today 
from what it used at the beginning of the war. 

The masses in every country were dragged into 
the war with an extraordinary ease which the most 
cynical prophets could not have foretold. Their 
resistance to the mental contagion, real or affected, 
of the intellectuals, proved to be virtually nil. 
The influence of governments and of the press 
surpassed the most sanguine chauvinistic hopes. 
The famous "political education" of the old par- 
liamentary peoples amounted to nothing but res- 
ignation. This is only too true. 

And yet, can we speak of a real crisis in the 
cause of democracy? I do not think so. In the 
first place, the political forms to which democracy 
was generally opposed failed in a much more 
striking manner. Then again, everything consid- 
ered, universal suffrage, for all its sudden fluc- 
tuations and palpable mistakes showed solid good 
sense on the whole. The war did not start by pop- 
ular vote: it was declared by the German execu- 
tive power. Peoples and parliaments merely ac- 
cepted a fait accompli. Could they have done any- 
thing else? In the case of Germany, particularly, 
they showed an incomprehensible cheerfulness and 
lightness of heart in so accepting the war. But 
once war was let loose upon the world the only 
practical way to stop it was to bring it to a suc- 
cessful finish. The war was a terrible calamity 
which, of course, could have nothing amusing 
about it. But in order not to lose the war, in order 



216 LENIN 

for the peoples to escape slavery, enthusiasm and 
confidence were necessary above all. The parlia- 
mentary assemblies of all countries did everything 
in their power to arouse enthusiasm in the masses 
and inspire self-confidence in the leaders. On the 
whole, in spite of the great indictment that may 
be brought against the German parliamentarians, 
theirs was a defensible attitude. 

When the " other danger" came, when the ter- 
rible temptation of Bolshevism arose before the 
peoples, universal suffrage gave a proof, which in 
my opinion is almost conclusive, of real good sense* 
in the masses. It was not by chance that the 
People's Commissars in Eussia or Hungary, and' 
their emulators in Germany, had to proclaim ' ' all 
power to the Soviets ! ' ' Universal suffrage every- 
where brought the Bolshevists nothing but disap- 
pointment. Even in Eussia, the elections for the 
Constituent Assembly, which took place after the 
coup d'etat of October and under the strong pres- 
sure of the Bolshevist authorities, gave a great 
majority to the adversaries of Bolshevism. In 
Germany the ballot gave Bolshevism a knock-out 
blow. Whatever imperfections may be ascribed 
to universal suffrage and the principles of democ- 
racy, they have not wholly shattered the hopes 
reposed in them. 

A disciple of Liebniz would say that a sort of 
pre-established harmony exists between the state 
of mind of a people, expressing itself through the 
suffrage, and the amount of social reform that 



THEORIES AND IDEAS 217 

can be realized in a definite space of time. The 
German Constituent Assembly has passed such 
reforms, probably, as the political and economic 
condition of Germany makes it at present possible 
to realize : a very democratic republican constitu- 
tion; fiscal reform which places the heavier bur- 
den of taxation on the propertied classes; con- 
fiscation of war profits; socialization of certain 
kinds of industry; very advanced labor legisla- 
tion, etc. 

The most difficult test which universal suffrage 
will have to undergo in the near future will take 
place in Russia. If the Russian people, who, with 
all their great qualities, still form one of the most 
backward nations in Europe, can avail themselves 
of universal suffrage, after all they have been 
through, without sinking into reaction and mon- 
archy; if with their votes they preserve freedom, 
a federal constitution, and a republican form of 
government, democratic principles will win a vic- 
tory which may without hesitation be called de- 
cisive. 

In the fifth place, the principles of socialism 
are also traversing a crisis today. Yet the very 
considerations which incline people at present to 
think of socialism as a failure seem to suggest an 
opposite conclusion. In spite of the numerous 
faults committed everywhere by the socialists 
(along with everybody else), two undeniable facts 
dominate the political philosophy of our time : 

a. The war clearly revealed the vices of the 



218 LENIN 

old world which the socialists have always de- 
nounced ; 

b. The revolution showed the necessity of the 
social reforms which were a part of the program 
of the socialist parties. 3 

Under these circumstances, whatever the errors 
and illusions of its disciples, the socialist idea has 
stood the great test perhaps better than any other. 

In the sixth place, it is more than permissible 
to speak, theoretically at least, of the complete 
failure of the revolutionary idea. The example 
of Eussia has killed a great and glorious legend. 
I think it unnecessary, after all that has been said 
in this book, to dwell on the character of the Bol- 
shevist Eevolution. I need only ask this question : 
did a revolution lead of necessity to this lament- 
able end? 

The answer is : yes. Given the terrible burden 
of the war and the moral disability the leaders of 
the first period of 1917 were under to conclude a 
separate peace, the Russian Eevolution simply had 
to enter on its Bolshevist phase. Many costly 
mistakes were made which hastened the debacle 
and the early passing of power into the hands of 
Lenin. But a separate peace with Germany was 
the only thing that might perhaps have prevented 
this ending of the Russian drama. The tempta- 
tion of peace, which made Lenin's career, was too 

3 Was it not President Wilson's League of Nations which 
adopted, and caused national governments to adopt, the 
wholesome idea of the eight-hour day which only yesterday 
was denounced as anarchy, an idle dream, an absurdity, etc.? 



THEORIES AND IDEAS 219 

great for the people, worn out by three years of 
war to resist. 

If the revolution in Germany has so far taken a 
different course from that followed in Russia (the 
resemblances between the moral indices of both 
revolutions is nevertheless very pronounced), that 
is due less to differences in national traits and 
degree of civilization in the two countries than 
to the difference in nexus between the two rev- 
olutions and the war. In Russia the Lvovs, Sakin- 
kovs and Kerenskys wanted to continue the war 
and had to do so ; while the Lenins and Trotskys 
promised the masses immediate peace, and thus 
scored a victory over their adversaries. In Ger- 
many, the revolution of November, 1918, had im- 
mediate peace for its aim from the very beginning ; 
and the men who came into power then began 
by offering the people peace abroad and peace 
at home; while their opponents, the Spartacides, 
did not hide their desire to plunge the country into 
the abyss of a civil war, the benefits of which had 
already been shown by the Russian Revolution. 
As for foreign policy, the Spartacides maintained 
an ambiguous attitude, even going so far as to 
preach a "holy war" in alliance with the Russian 
proletariat against the "capitalists of the En- 
tente.' ' The superiority of the Bolshevist tactic 
to that of the Spartacides is evident from this also, 
that it was only later, when the Bolshevist power 
was already organized, that Lenin gradually 
played, and one by one, his trumps of civil war. 



220 LENIN 

His campaign of April-October, 1917, was primar- 
ily inspired by the idea of immediate peace with 
Germany. The Spartacides, on the contrary, be- 
ing unable to win the German people over with 
the promise of external peace (since others had 
already signed the Armistice), were unwise 
enough to terrify them by suddenly conjuring up 
the discredited ghost of a civil, and perhaps of 
a "holy," war. The most stupid even went so 
far as to promise that a wonderful army of 
Trotsky's would materialize on the Ehine to fight 
the imperialists of the Entente. The exhausted 
people were appalled at such allurements; and 
hastened to support those who promised peace 
abroad and peace at home. 

But if the Eussian Eevolution had to end in 
Bolshevism, was it therefore a mistake, a crime 
even, to bring it about? 

There are several answers to this distressing 
question. It can be, and it is, said that nobody 
caused the Eevolution; that it came on by itself. 
There is some truth in this. It is also said that 
the Eevolution was caused by those who were its 
first victims — the Czar and his ministers. This 
is also true enough. It is said that, for all the 
catastrophes resulting from it, the Eevolution was 
better than the stagnation of the old regime — on 
the principle that "the longest way round is the 
shortest way home." This is the opinion ex- 
pressed in a diary by the unfortunate Chingarev, 
the Cadet deputy who, for no reason whatsoever, 



THEORIES AND IDEAS 221 

was thrown into prison by the big Bolshevists and 
murdered in a hospital by some little ones. There 
is an element of truth in this again. It can be 
said that from the national point of view the 
Eevolution was a disaster and a crime, for it has 
led to the breaking up of Eussia, to general ruin, 
and unheard-of sufferings. That would be the 
answer of our Burkes, our conservatives, our mod- 
erate liberals. We will probably not support such 
a contention. 

However, it is not the verdict history will bring 
in against the Eussian Eevolution which matters 
most at present. The important thing is the les- 
son for the future which the experiences of our 
day may teach. This lesson I state as follows : 

The moral and political balance-sheet of rev- 
olutions which overthrow despotic regimes can be 
and nearly always is positive, in spite of the very 
heavy liabilities involved; since despotic regimes 
themselves are but slow revolutions and bear most 
of the responsibility for the debacles in which 
they end. But in countries where universal suf- 
frage with freedom of speech is guaranteed, when 
these two powerful instruments of liberty are in 
operation, every revolution is a catastrophe, and 
every resort to revolution a crime. 

In the present stage of moral and intellectual 
development in the human race, revolution is at- 
tended by such terrible outbreaks of crime, such 
numbers of victims, so much ruin, such bitter 
hatred, such cynical demagogy, that men come to 



222 LENIN 

hate the very idea which revolution hopes to 
realize. Though the purpose of revolution is very 
often a worthy one, the end is always massacre, 
savagery, and general political prostration. This 
is the criterion we can use in judging the revolu- 
tions of the past and of the future. 

The Eussian Eevolution of March, 1917, was a 
blessing because it overthrew one of the wickedest 
despotisms in history. The German revolution 
was also a blessing because it substituted a free 
republican system for the virtual absolutism 4 
of William II, who threw the world into mourning 
and reduced Europe to blood and fire. But the 
Bolshevist and Spartacide revolutions were dis- 
asters, crimes, because they were directed against 
regimes founded on the sovereignty of the people 
and furnishing all possible guarantees for the 
free conflict of ideas and movements. 

"But very well then ! If the revolutionary idea 
has failed, as you believe, what can you put in 
its place to lead humanity to a better destiny! 
Are you not reduced to the old-fashioned and 
naive, not to say hypocritical, idea of a coopera- 
tion of classes ? Wealth in control will never con- 
sent to renounce its ancient privileges for the 
benefit of society as a whole. It is Utopian to 
imagine that capitalism can be abolished without 

4 Germany had a certain freedom of the press and universal 
suffrage for the Reichstag which, however, was very far from 
being omnipotent. The great power of the Kaiser, to say 
nothing of the electoral system of Prussia, made popular 
sovereignty a myth. 



THEORIES AND IDEAS 223 

civil war. Do you think that our millionaires will 
bow, without striking a blow, to the mere sound- 
ness of your arguments ? ' ' (Lenin. ) 

No, I do not think anything of the sort. But 
neither do I think that capitalism can be abol- 
ished by civil war which, in the long run, simply 
strengthens ideas of social conservatism. This 
book is in general founded on a very clear dis- 
tinction between facts as they are in reality and 
what one might like them to be. As far as the 
famous cooperation of classes is concerned, that 
is without doubt extremely desirable ; on the prin- 
ciple that an agreement is always a thousand times 
better than a fight ! But again, for the present, I 
can see such cooperation obtaining only in a few 
exceptional cases too rare entirely to serve as 
grounds for a political and social doctrine. The 
moral and intellectual level of humanity today 
does not permit us to have great hope in the near 
future either. As for a time more remote, I do 
not know and nobody knows — except the soap- 
boxers — what Destiny has in store for us. 

No, I have no more faith than Lenin has in the 
goodness and justice of millionaires; but neither 
have I faith in the virtue and magnanimity of the 
proletariat which he praises so highly. I do not 
believe that in general any serious political doc- 
trine can be based on an appeal to virtue and mag- 
nanimity. It is to common sense and especially 
to the sentiment of self-interest that reform must 
talk; and even then, as experience again shows, 



224 LENIN 

it does not always have the good fortune to be 
listened to. Humanity is guided by atavistic in- 
stincts, by waves of contagious emotion, which 
the doctrine of economic materialism has always 
ignored and which the war revealed in all their 
horror. Eeason usually comes too late, like a 
policeman after the crime ; but it comes neverthe- 
less. It has not been shown that humanity is abso- 
lutely incapable of deriving some profit, a small 
profit it may be, from the hard lessons experience 
teaches. 

Yes, those who in the present state of civiliza- 
tion would substitute friendly cooperation for 
class struggle are certainly Utopians. It is not 
enough, however, to recognize that the class strug- 
gle exists and must exist. We still have to decide 
in what form we want this struggle to take place. 
I believe that for some time, and beginning with 
our very day, progressive men in democratic 
countries will divide according to the type of com- 
bat they prefer. 

The crux of the matter is this : do you want a 
class struggle in the form of a violent revolution 
with all that terrible word involves? If so, you 
must belong to the Third International, the Inter- 
national of Lenin. If not, you belong in the anti- 
Bolshevist camp. 

For the word "revolution" in a free and demo- 
cratic country means all that the doctrine of the 
Third International implies: adjustment of con- 
flicting interests by violence, absolute denial of 



THEORIES AND IDEAS 225 

the principle of universal suffrage, dictatorship 
of the proletariat, a Soviet constitution, civil war, 
abolition of civil and political rights, and, if need 
be, terrorism. 

This is so evident that one wonders in astonish- 
ment how socialist parties, which call themselves, 
and are in their essence, anti-Bolshevist, can 
speak of the dictatorship of the proletariat in 
their platforms or wave the banner of social rev- 
olution in their propaganda — granted of course 
that this revolution is relegated by them to some 
indefinite future ! 5 For the dilemma is extremely 
simple: either " revolution' ' means to realize the 
ideas and aspirations of the majority of the peo- 
ple — in that case, in a democratic country where 
universal suffrage is omnipotent, it is a political 
absurdity; or else the revolution aims to impose 
the will of a minority upon the majority, in which 
case it implies an abrogation of universal suffrage, 
a dictatorship "of the proletariat" (so they say!), 
the substitution of Soviets for parliaments, and 
so on — all the features, in short, of Lenin's 
doctrine. 

"But," a socialist of the school of Kautsky 
could still say, "you forget the resistance of the 
property-owners, the great inertia of capitalism. 
Do you imagine the principle of popular sover- 

5 Twenty years ago Kautsky was easily able to answer 
Bernstein by saying: "We can quietly leave the problem 
of the dictatorship of the proletariat for the future. It is 
futile for us to be dogmatic about it today." This convenient 
evasion is unfortunately now no longer practicable. 



226 LENIN 

eignty is a sacred unassailable dogma to our bour- 
geois ? They burn incense to that idol so long as 
it is a beneficent deity ; but the moment a Constit- 
uent Assembly elected by universal suffrage tries 
to take privileges away from them, you will see 
how much use they have for the suffrage, and for 
constitutionality. In that situation a violent rev- 
olution will have necessarily to take place.' ' 

I have never said that there could be no Bolshe- 
vists except in Lenin's camp. The bourgeois 
very likely have their own Bolshevists ; and it is 
possible that in a crisis they may have recourse 
to Lenin's methods to keep what they have. Then 
it will probably be necessary to use force against 
them just as force must be used today against the 
dictators in the Kremlin. But in this case it 
would still be Bolshevists at the bottom of the 
revolution — the Bolshevists of the bourgeoisie. 
However, I do not think that this must be the 
fatal, inevitable end of our social conflicts. In 
the first place I doubt whether these conflicts will 
take the form of a magical and instantaneous 
transformation which will, to quote the famous 
simplist formula, "expropriate the expropria- 
tors" in a single day. We probably have before 
us a long and slowly unfolding series of far-reach- 
ing reforms each one of which will probably de- 
mand great sacrifices on the part of the privileged 
classes for the benefit of the majority. The haute 
bourgeoisie, you see, has had time to meditate on 
the terrible lessons of these past years. It is not 



THEORIES AND IDEAS 227 

at all certain that our men of wealth will care to 
have recourse to force with all the great risks 
this involves, rather than submit to the will of 
the people. They will have fresh in their memory 
the fate of governments which have tried to rule 
with the mailed fist for the benefit of a minority 
against the majority — the fate of Nicholas II, of 
William II, and soon, probably, that of Lenin 
himself ! 

Under these circumstances we must not despair 
of the possibility of progress without violence and 
revolution. Conflict of ideas under conditions of 
equal freedom for everybody; class struggle, 
rabid if necessary, but without knives and with- 
out guns — a struggle carried on by the "twenty- 
five soldiers of Gutenberg," and by the ballot — 
such is my programme. 

"But," the skeptic will tell me, "you said you 
were going to observe a clear distinction between 
what is in reality and what would be desirable. 
Certainly you will agree that your very desirable 
programme appears to be worlds removed from 
what it actually is. The earth, alas, seems to be- 
long to knives, and especially to machine guns. 
Eevolutionary ideas are gaining ground every- 
where. There will always be revolutions just as 
there will always be wars." 

I doubt whether I could confound this skeptic. 
Skeptics like cynics are more often right than they 
deserve to be. Nevertheless my guess is that the 
world will not always belong to machine guns. 



228 LENIN 

Such clever weapons have this drawback, or rather 
this advantage, that in the long run people get 
sick of them. Two years, five years, ten years, 
and then the most obstinate and the most stupid 
begin to have enough of slaughter. Perhaps there 
will always be wars and revolutions ; but meeting 
skepticism with skepticism we may say that such 
a statement could not be proved. At any rate 
much depends on what the educated people of 
the various countries stand for. The Eussian 
Eevolution has emphasized the important role that 
the so-called "intellectuals" could play in political 
change. I think that socialist intellectuals the 
world over (I am speaking only of those who are 
anti-Bolshevist) have abused the slogan of social 
revolution. It was easy to speak of such a thing 
when you did not have to show how, nor say when 
and where. But the hour came and went. The 
experiment has been tried. We now know what 
the social revolution is like. The word that stands 
for it must disappear from our political vocab- 
ulary. We renounce worship of this idol not in 
the name of conservatism, as has been done so 
often, but in the name of human freedom. 

As I come to the end of my study, I should 
like to give a brief but less negative sketch of the 
platform from which I have criticized Leninism. 

Socialism is today as much a problem of pro- 
duction as of redistribution of wealth. Tn every 
country the most important task at present is to 
find means of increasing production. In countries 



THEORIES AND IDEAS 229 

like Enssia, where natural resources are abundant 
and hardly exploited at all, the problem can be 
solved more easily than elsewhere. In the old 
civilized nations like France, Germany or Eng- 
land, the situation is not so simple. People will 
have either to emigrate or to fall back on new 
inventions, like those which were frequently put 
into practice during the war. 

And for this latter reason the first duty of 
intelligent governments (admitting that there are 
a few) must be to give money to science without 
stint, and to pure, as well as to applied science 
(for one can never tell what practical benefits may 
result from researches which seemed at first to 
have no utilitarian bearing at all). Hitherto, un- 
fortunately, the exact opposite of this has been 
done. Governments have begun economizing by 
cutting the funds destined to the universities. A 
great physicist of world renown recently said that 
with the resources he had today he was barely 
able to pay his laboratory errand boy; as for new 
instruments and expensive experiments, they were 
no longer to be thought of. 

An enlightened government, no matter how poor 
the condition of its treasury, should give not 
millions, but hundreds of millions, to science. It 
should establish new schools and new professor- 
ships, and laboratories where not only experi- 
enced students, but all who show a taste for scien- 
tific research can work. Each country should 
strive to develop a " state of mind" conducive to 



230 LENIN 

conditions which would attract intelligent young 
people toward science. (Hitherto, in Europe, the 
best talent has been absorbed by politics which 
feeds its devotees better and affords much greater 
and easier satisfactions to vanity.) It should pay 
scholars "royally" ("republicanly," they are 
very badly paid!) ; it should institute prizes and 
rewards for work in pure science, as well as for 
practical research. It should become a buyer of 
patents, and an editor of scientific journals to 
protect the savant from exploitation by the capi- 
talist. 

It is a very cheap business, of course, to dwell 
on material rewards for scientific work; every- 
body knows that scientists (like politicians!) seek 
in their labors only the satisfaction of duty well 
done. But the events of recent years have left 
us unconvinced as to the noble impulses of human 
nature. The war seems almost to have exhausted 
the reserves of idealism in the minds of our con- 
temporaries. We do not think, accordingly, that 
large rewards and high salaries would spoil any- 
thing. It is probably a far better bargain to pay 
seekers after truth than to shower money and 
power, as we have been doing, on these men to 
whom we owe this present state of world chaos. 
We gave billions lavishly for the work of the Hin- 
denburgs and the Ludendorfs. Can we not find 
millions for the Edisons and the Pasteurs? They 
could not be better spent ! 

The second problem, and one of greater impor- 



THEORIES AND IDEAS 231 

tance, before the legislator in every country to- 
lay is that of education of the coming generation. 
For the one which passed through the crisis of 
L914-19, with all the heroism it displayed, did not 
some up to the mark. We can repeat today what 
Schiller wrote in 1793 : 

"The attempts of the French people to re- 
establish themselves in the sacred rights of man 
*nd gain political liberty have only revealed their 
impotence . . . and because of this impotence not 
[>nly the unfortunate French themselves but a 
considerable part of Europe and a whole civil- 
ization have been thrown back into barbarism and 
slavery. The moment was most favorable ; but it 
found a corrupt generation unworthy of it, a gen- 
eration which could not rise to the wonderful 
)pportunity before it. And this failure shows 
:hat the human race has not yet emerged from 
;he age of childish violence, that the liberal rule 
)f reason came too soon, when we were still un- 
prepared to harness the brutal energies within us. 
Purely we are not ripe for civil liberty when we 
ire lacking in humanity to this extent. 

"Man is seen reflected in his actions; and what 
s the picture afforded us in the mirror of the 
present day? Here the most revolting savagery; 
;here, its opposite extreme, inertia ! In the lower 
classes, a riot of vulgar anarchistic instincts, 
ivhich, set free from the bonds of the social order, 
ire bent on satiating every bestial desire with 
mgovernable fury. What prevented an earlier 



232 LENIN 

explosion was not, as we now see, internal moral 
strength, but only restraining force from above. 
The French were not free individuals whom the 
State had oppressed; they were savage animals 
on whom kings had put wholesome chains. On 
the other hand, the educated classes reveal a still 
more repugnant spectacle of complete debility, 
weakness of spirit, and degradation of character, 
which is all the more revolting in that culture 
itself has a greater part in it. . . . 

"Is that, I ask, the Humanity for whose 
'rights' philosophy is extenuating itself, which 
the noble citizens of the world are thinking of, 
and in which a new Solon is to realize his consti- 
tution of freedom? I doubt it very much. . . . 
The French Eepublic will disappear as speedily 
as it was born; the republican constitution will 
sooner or later end in a state of anarchy, and the 
only hope for the nation will be for a powerful 
man to rise, it matters not from where, and calm 
the storm, re-establish order, and hold the reins 
of government firmly in hand. And let him, if 
need arise, become absolute master, not of France 
only, but of a great part of Europe !" 

This is admirable as prophecy; but it was not 
the solution of the problem. Napoleon did not 
bring salvation to the French nation. He simply 
plunged it into a new crisis. Today it would be 
childish to look for the salvation of humanity 
through the rise of some "man on horseback." 
The generation which has lived through these 



THEORIES AND IDEAS 233 

four terrible years cannot be courted with bou- 
quets of military laurels. A complete reform of 
the moral and intellectual education of humanity 
can alone bring it the hope of better things. 

As for the question of social reforms, every- 
thing must be done to make the rights and com- 
fort of the workers compatible with the condition 
of maximum production on which the very exist- 
ence of our civilization depends. It is from this 
twofold point of view that the problem of the 
socialization of industry must be approached and 
solved. Socialization must take place without 
curtailing production. Experiment alone can show 
the way; and in this all countries can only learn 
from each other and by the empirical method. The 
motto of these experiments should be the search 
for conditions of maximum comfort for the work- 
ers with a view not to the interest of capital, which 
in itself is of no consequence, but to the maximum 
development of production. 

This research must be conducted on an inter- 
national scale, as was the case with the introduc- 
tion of the eight-hour day. Think of the hoots 
'that once were heard when this "pernicious" re- 
form was mentioned ! And how readily it was ac- 
cepted in 1919, when it was seen to be necessary. 
Perhaps the good sense of the controlling classes 
will triumph also in the question of international 
relations ; people will perhaps end by seeing that 
the preservation of European civilization abso- 
lutely demands that the terrible nightmare of 1914- 



234 LENIN 

1918 be forgotten, and a real League of Nations 
instituted in which there will not be a nnion of 
conquerors but an international parliament where 
questions which concern the whole world can be 
discussed and settled. 

These five years of a censorship such as Europe 
has not known for a great many years have given 
us an opportunity to appreciate the real value of 
freedom of thought. Especially those who have 
lived under the Bolshevist regime will pause to 
reflect before they attack the conquests of "bour- 
geois" liberalism, though experience has been 
equally decisive in revealing the great abuses of 
capital in this matter. The incalculable harm 
wrought by a certain element in the capitalist press 
during the war, the hatred and falsehood it has 
sown abroad, give it the same moral standing as. 
the Bolshevist or semi-Bolshevist organs. We 
have seen only too well and in almost every coun- 
try the edifying example of great newspapers 
which the foreign enemy was able to buy in the 
full midst of the war and force to serve his own 
cause. We want everybody in the world to have 
full freedom to express his thoughts; but con- 
ditions which allow speculators and profiteers to 
buy newspapers with a circulation of a million, 
influence public policy according to their whim, 
and systematically corrupt and pervert the ideas 
of the masses, are intolerable. 

Eadical reforms are necessary here. We can- 
not enumerate them all. Perhaps the State should 



THEORIES AND IDEAS 235 

found and support a certain number of dailies to 
make free forums of them. This idea is less fan- 
tastic than it seems. Since the news in these 
State papers would be true and absolutely impar- 
tial, it could no longer serve base political in- 
trigues and selfish speculations on exchange. As 
for the editorials, they could be written in turn 
by esteemed representatives of every political 
hue. In this way the readers of the newspapers 
would be better informed than they are today; 
and instead of being influenced by papers faith- 
fully submissive to the will of those who own 
them, they will be led by honest people of the 
most opposite views and will be able to form opin- 
ions after taking into account every pro and con. 
The practical difficulties in the way of this reform 
can be surmounted if recourse is had to organi- 
zations of men of letters who will choose editors 
from among the foremost writers of the day. 
Moreover, if the literary and artistic sections of 
the great dailies are entrusted to them, public 
morals and popular taste cannot help benefiting 
thereby. 

The germ of this future state of affairs can be 
seen today in the organization of some of the so- 
cialist papers, such as Humanite, for instance, for 
which Thomas, and Alexandre Blanc, Kenaudel 
and Longuet, Sembat and Frossard, may write in 
turn. The presence of politicians of such differ- 
ent opinions in the bosom of the same party is 
harmful and foolish. But the case is entirely dif- 



236 LENIN 

ferent with newspapers, whose special aim is to 
present opposing political opinions to the public. 
The State newspapers should be a second parlia- 
mentary forum where all orators may speak 
freely without influences of an " editorial policy" 
to cramp them, and with no obligation toward 
each other save that, perhaps, of a certain amount 
of courtesy, which is still to be found in the par- 
liaments but which has quite vanished from the 
press. They will not express opinions of a min- 
istry like the " inspired" papers of today; on the 
contrary, they can and should give hospitality to 
the most violent attacks upon the men in power 
(just as the Official Journal — the French " Con- 
gressional Kecord" — published at the expense of 
the Government, gives the exact stenographic re- 
port of what all the speakers in the Parliament 
say). There is no question here of the general 
socialization of the press. Along with these "free 
forums," published at the expense of the Govern- 
ment, all the various private papers will continue 
much as before. Writers who have their own or- 
gans will continue to profit by them; and those 
who have none will find their chance in the organs 
of the State. It may be necessary to socialize the 
so-called "popular press,"— la presse du boule- 
vard — which has sheets of enormous circulation 
and whose influence on the public mind is very 
clearly distinguishable from that of the others. 
It is inconsistent to proclaim a government mo- 
nopoly in public education and leave untouched 



THEORIES AND IDEAS 237 

these organs which form public opinion, which 
are a thousand times more powerful than the 
schools and are today distributors of corruption 
rather than of information. If such State news- 
papers were entrusted to corporations of writers 
they would be just as independent as the Acade- 
mies and Universities, which are nevertheless 
supported by the State today in most countries. 
The "confiscation" of the "popular" papers must 
be carried out under conditions which will not en- 
courage trouble-makers to create others like them. 
In this way only those men will publish news- 
papers who do so, not to make them instruments 
of financial intrigue, but to express tendencies of 
political thought with which they are in sympathy. 
I cannot give a detailed plan for such a " reform" 
here. I do believe, however, that a solution of 
the question of real freedom for the press is to 
be found along this line. Bolshevism has shown 
us an ignoble and shameless state of affairs where 
all the press has been "socialized" to the advan- 
tage of one party, and where independent opin- 
ion is cynically smothered. The present state of 
chaos in the western countries is without doubt 
infinitely superior to the regime set up in the Re- 
public of the Soviets. In France and England all. 
political opinions can be freely expressed. But 
the abuse of the power of money gives privileges 
to those elements which are usually the least 
trustworthy. The system proposed here seems 
to give guarantees for the greatest liberty and 



238 LENIN 

equality, without disadvantage to anyone except 
a small handful of bankers. 

The last question which I am to touch upon is 
probably one of the most important — the prob- 
lem of land. Here the Eussian Eevolution has 
given us one of its greatest negative lessons. 

There is no question as to the facts : the peas- 
ant wants the land to be his private property ; he 
does not want any socialization that detracts in 
any way from his full possession of the soil he 
tills. One of the tragedies of the old Eussian " in- 
tellectual" agitation lay in thinking, and making 
the people think, that they wanted something that 
they did not want. In 1917, by a fatal paradox, 
we had to persuade the Eussians that they wanted 
to go on with the war while, as a matter of fact, 
they wanted to withdraw at any cost. This was 
the only point on which the people as a whole 
agreed with the Bolshevists, who, on this one 
point, gained their October victory. On that oc- 
casion it was our duty to go against our common 
sense. But need we persist today in thinking 
wrongly that the peasants are ready to give up 
private ownership of land? If we do, we will col- 
lide with another hard reality. Since the peasants 
in Eussia form 80 per cent of the population, 
the conflict between socialist and democratic prin- 
ciples will be inevitable, if it be assumed that so- 
cialism is incompatible with the recognition of 
private ownership in land. 

The Marxians formerly laid great store on the 



THEORIES AND IDEAS 239 

"law" of the concentration of landed property 
and the "proletarization" of the peasant masses. 
Criticism from the school of Bernstein has shown 
the fallacy of these hopes; and the war revealed 
the invalidity of Marxian prognostication in gen- 
eral. It is therefore necessary to understand two 
things clearly : that, in the first place, it is impos- 
sible to force the communist principle and a "kind 
of happiness" on peasants who form the great 
majority of the Enssian people and of many other 
peoples also; and secondly, that the continued 
"proletarization" of the peasants is a dream and 
not a pleasant dream at that. Under these cir- 
cumstances the socialists should look for a solu- 
tion of the problem in a reconciliation of their 
general doctrine with the principle of the private 
ownership in land — an ownership limited by cer- 
tain laws of a necessity obvious to the peasant's 
common sense. The great socialist and demo- 
cratic parties, especially those of Kussia, which 
find their main support in the peasantry — the 
most industrious of all classes — should mold their 
policies toward such a conciliation. It is by no 
means an impossible one. 

tF wi" tF ^t ^ 

"Revolution is a form of that immanence which 
forces itself upon us from all hands and which we 
call Necessity. 

"In the face of this mysterious complication of 
pleasures and sufferings the eternal question rises 
— the 'Why* of History. 



240 LENIN 

" 'Why?' 

" 'Because!' 

"This answer of the ignoramus is the answer 
also of the sage. 

"In the presence of these climacteric catastro- 
phes which devastate — and rejuvenate — civiliza- 
tion, criticism of detail is hazardous. To blame 
or to praise men for the results they achieve is 
like praising or blaming figures for the sum they 
amount to. That which is destined to perish, 
perishes. The wind that must blow, blows. 

"Eternal truth does not suffer from these 
storm winds. Above revolutions lie Truth and 
Justice as the starry sky lies above the tempest.' ' 

This serene philosophy of Victor Hugo 6 is not 
for the world of the present ; I am not sure even 
that it is for mankind at all. 

In "blaming " the men we see in action today 
(and why should we praise them?) we are also 
obeying Necessity. 

In the face of a twofold catastrophe which has 
devastated civilization and which may perhaps 
"rejuvenate" it, we have not hesitated to pass 
judgment. 

The Messina earthquake had its good side, I 
suppose: when the old city was destroyed, those 
who survived had to build a new and better one, 
one more suited to their needs. But if some Rea- 
son or other were presiding over human destiny, 
we could have gotten along without this earth- 

8 The passage is found in 'Ninety Three. 



THEORIES AND IDEAS 241 

quake very well. Were two hundred thousand 
victims and countless losses of property necessary 
to improve a town or get a new one built? 

The European War and the Eussian Revolu- 
tion have "rejuvenated" civilization much as the 
earthquake " rejuvenated" Messina. I am not 
convinced that ten million men had to die, that 
the labors of generations had to be destroyed, to 
obtain this poor and downtrodden League of 
Nations of ours. 

Nor am I convinced that the world had to be 
plunged into the abyss of Leninism to force min- 
istries (and often public opinion) to understand 
the need for radical social reforms. But let us at 
any rate hope — however uncertain it all may be — 
that surmounting everything we have seen and 
endured in these last years, "Truth and Justice 
do in fact endure like the starry sky above the 
tempest!" 



H 12 9 






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